(AFP) – About 200 would-be immigrants from Ethiopia and Somalia are dead or missing after two boats they were travelling in sank off the coast of Yemen on the weekend, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said yesterday.

One boat with 148 people on board sank on Saturday near the Yemeni coast after an argument between traffickers in charge of the vessel, killing at least 58 people with 37 still missing, the UNHCR said.

Another boat with 270 passengers hit a rock and sank on Sunday as it was trying to evade a Yemeni security patrol. Only 173 passengers were able to swim to shore and the rest, including a number of children, remain missing.

“The survivors of the second boat told us that the traffickers were violent with them during the trip,” said UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Tort.

“The passengers were violently roughed up and one man, who could not bear the beating any longer, jumped overboard and drowned,” she said.

The number of illegal immigrants traversing the Gulf of Aden shot up dramatically between September and December, UNHCR said.

More than 1,400 clandestine immigrants have died in the zone this year.