UNHCR expresses concern after two people shot dead on Yemen coast

GENEVA, December 13 (UNHCR) - The UN refugee agency expressed concern on Wednesday after Yemeni security forces opened fire on a boat carrying people across the Gulf of Aden and killed two people.

"We are extremely concerned about this incident, where innocent civilians got hurt," said Radhouane Nouicer, UNHCR's Geneva-based deputy director for the region. "Our colleagues in Yemen have informed the authorities and asked them to instruct the coastguard to refrain from shooting at arriving boats."

The shooting incident came on Monday when a boat carrying some 120 Somalis and Ethiopians reached the shore near the Yemeni town of Belhaf. Survivors told UNHCR that Yemeni security forces killed one Somali passenger and a smuggler. A third Somali had died in the boat hours earlier.

The new arrivals said the armed forces started shooting when passengers were disembarking on the beach. The shooting incident was confirmed by the Yemeni security coordinator in Belhaf.

Passengers claimed the smugglers were in possession of a gun, but decided to head back out to sea with some 60 passengers still on board. They had left two days earlier from the autonomous Somali region of Puntland.

The remaining passengers were later dropped further along the coast in the area of Jila'a and the smugglers headed back across the Gulf of Aden with the three bodies on board. Later some of the Somalis claimed that another four of their compatriots were missing, but UNHCR has not been able to trace them.

A total of 110 of the 120 new arrivals sought assistance from UNHCR at the agency's May'fa reception centre in Yemen. Most of the new arrivals said they came from the provinces of Bay and Middle-Shabelle, while were from the Somali capital Mogadishu.

Close to 23,000 people have been recorded arriving in Yemen from Somalia this year. But at least 360 people have died making the perilous journey and more than 150 are missing, according to UNHCR records.

Most of the recent arrivals said they were from southern and central Somalia, where they claim their freedom has been significantly curtailed since the region came under the control earlier this year of the Islamic Courts Union. They also cited an increase in inter-tribal and inter-clan conflict and said they feared for their lives.

Yemen is one of the few countries in the region that has signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and has been very generous in receiving an increasing number of new arrivals in the region. UNHCR has however expressed concern on various occasions about deportations of non-Somali nationals, most recently in the last weeks.

There are currently more than 88,000 registered refugees in Yemen, of whom 84,000 are Somalis.