Refugees Thrown Overboard

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http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/26/refugees.overboard.ap/index.html

GENEVA, Switzerland (AP) -- The number of people confirmed dead after smugglers forced hundreds of refugees overboard off the coast of Yemen has risen to 29, the U.N. refugee agency said Monday.

Seventy-one people are missing.

Knife-wielding smugglers forced 450 Somalis and Ethiopians overboard into stormy seas along a remote stretch of Yemen coastline at Ras-Alkalb in the Gulf of Aden last Thursday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement.

The smugglers forced their passengers overboard so they could make a speedy departure after being spotted by Yemeni security forces, UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort said.

It was the latest case of smuggler brutality involving boats carrying people across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia. It brings the total number of dead and missing among people trying to reach Yemen so far this year to 262.

"We are horrified by this latest tragedy," said Erika Feller, the agency's assistant high commissioner for protection.

The victims are people "who are desperate to escape persecution, violence and poverty in the Horn of Africa," she said.