Posted on 10/14/2002 5:31:20 PM PDT by HAL9000
At least 70 people have died in a boat that drifted at sea for more than two weeks.The dead were among 120 Somalis and Ethiopians who left their coastal village aiming to seek jobs in Persian Gulf states.
Their boat's engine failed, leaving them drifting in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia, survivors said.
The 50 surviving passengers were given food and water after it beached two weeks later near Las Qorey, about 750 miles north of Mogadishu.
But, a Las Qorey elder, Mohamed Abdi, said five people died after the boat landed.
Most of the others - including two women and the children they gave birth to while aboard the boat - were in critical condition at a small medical clinic in the town.
The six crew members were well enough to walk, he said.
The survivors told residents of Las Qorey, located on Somalia's north coast in the autonomous Puntland region, that they left Marear, farther east along the same coast, 17 days earlier, said a local official, Abdalleh Mohamud.
After the first day, they said, the engine failed and the vessel began drifting. The boat's food and water soon ran out and people began to die within a week.
Hundreds of people have died in rickety, run-down boats trying to reach Yemen since Somalia descended into chaos after the ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
The Puntland government has banned such sea travel without success.
Such as Maine.
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