At least 49 die and 140 are missing in sinking of migrant boat off Yemen's coast, UN agency says
Cairo, Jun 11: A boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Yemen, killing at least 49 people and leaving another 140 missing, the UN group said on Tuesday.
The boat was carrying about 260 Somalis and Ethiopians from the northern coast of Somalia on the 320-kilometer journey across the Gulf of Aden when it sank Monday off of Yemen's southern coast, the International Organization for Migration said in a statement.
Seventy-one people have been rescued and the search is ongoing, the group said, noting that 31 women and six children are among the dead.
Yemen is a major route for migrants from East Africa and the Horn of Africa trying to reach Gulf countries for work. Despite a nearly decade-long civil war in Yemen, the number of arriving migrants has tripled in recent years, from about 27,000 in 2021 to more than 90,000 last year, the IOM said last month. About 380,000 migrants are currently in Yemen, according to the agency.
To reach Yemen, migrants are taken by smugglers on often dangerous, overcrowded boats across the Red Sea or Gulf of Aden.
In April, at least 62 people died in two shipwrecks off the coast of Djibouti as they tried to reach Yemen. The IOM said at least 1,860 people have died or disappeared along the route, including 480 who drowned.
Monday's sinking “is another reminder of the urgent need to work together to address urgent migration challenges and ensure the safety and security of migrants along migration routes,” said IOM spokesperson Mohammedali Abunajela.
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Shivaji statue collapse case: HC grants bail to consultant Chetan Patil
Mumbai (PTI): The Bombay High Court on Thursday granted bail to consultant Chetan Patil arrested in connection with the collapse of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj''s statue at Rajkot fort in Malvan in August.
A 35-foot statue of the iconic Maratha warrior king collapsed in Sindhudurg district on August 26, nearly nine months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled it on Navy Day.
Patil was arrested on August 30 from Kolhapur.
A single bench of Justice A S Kilor on Thursday held that no case was made out to implicate Patil in the case as he had not been appointed as the structural designer of the statue.
The bench further said Patil had only submitted a structural stability report of the pedestal of the statue and the pedestal was intact even after the collapse.
Another accused, Jaydeep Apte, who was the sculptor and contractor, was also arrested in the case. The HC said it would hear his bail plea on November 25.
The Sindhudurg police had registered an FIR under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita for negligence and other offences last month against Apte and Patil for the statue's collapse.
Patil and Apte moved HC seeking bail after a sessions court rejected their pleas.
