Sixty five Indian fishermen have been stranded at Khokha in Yemen. This is the same place where a boat with 20 Indian fishermen was hit by Saudi Air-strike last week.
According to sources, the Indian embassy in Djibouti is in touch with local authorities and efforts are on to evacuate the fishermen.
Earlier, denying reports of death of 20 Indians in Yemen, the Ministry of External Affairs had clarified that 13 out of the 20 reported killed are alive. “We have seen media reports about the death of Indian nationals in Yemen. Indian Embassy officials in Djbouti are in touch with local contacts and we have ascertained that there were two boats one of which was plying between Berbera (Somalia) and Mokha (Yemen). The boats came under aerial bombardment in the afternoon of September 8. The boats were carrying a total of 20 Indian crew members of which 13 are alive and 7 are reported missing,” Swarup had said.
The attack on the boats was by Saudi-led coalition forces. The airstrikes were targeted at fuel smugglers in Yemen. The alliance, made up mainly of Gulf Arab countries, has increased air strikes on Sanaa and other parts of the country since Friday, when a Houthi missile attack killed at least 60 Saudi, Bahraini and United Arab Emirates soldiers at a military camp east of Sanaa.
They were part of a force preparing to assault the capital, which the Iranian-allied Houthis seized in September 2014. Friday’s attack was the deadliest yet for Gulf soldiers in the war and may herald a turning point as Saudi-allied countries appear to be committing to a ground war they had so far avoided.
2015 IBNLive.com