Tuesday, May 04, 2010
It said the 35 Ethiopians and 10 Somalis were arrested on Friday not far from the capital, 170 kilometres (100 miles) from the south coast where illegal migrants usually land after perilous voyages.
They were arrested in the same area where 200 other migrants have been detained over the past several months, a ministry statement said.
African migrants, especially Ethiopians and Somalis fleeing poverty and unrest at home, generally slip into southern Yemen by boat before heading north towards the Saudi frontier.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said last month that the number of Somali migrants crossing into Yemen had dropped drastically since the start of this year, despite recurring violence in Somalia.
UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a Geneva news conference that 9,400 people had reached Yemen between January and March this year, compared with 17,000 for the same period in 2009.
The report said that only a third were Somalis, whereas a year ago the vast majority were from the war-wracked Horn of Africa nation.
(Agence France-Presse (AFP))