Their boat capsized last weekend after encountering high winds and rough sea.

Yemen’s Interior Ministry officials say at least 70 Ethiopian migrants sank off the country’s al-Makha Port near the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb over the weekend when their boat capsized after encountering strong winds and rough waves, BBC reported.  

A statement from Yemen’s Interior Ministry revealed that, "All those who were on board died," adding that all were from Ethiopia, alakbar reported. The boat carrying the migrants, Aljazeera   further said, was one of those used by smugglers to transport migrants to Yemen across the Red Sea.

Tens of thousands attempt to cross the Red Sea into Yemen every year, often in rickety, overcrowded vessels, BBC reported and said hundreds have died making the journey. The Red Sea crossing between the Horn of Africa and Yemen is one of the world's major migration routes. Human traffickers often use unseaworthy boats to smuggle African migrants to Yemen, seen as a gateway to wealthier parts of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, and Europe.

Migrants dream of finding jobs and better lives in rich places like Saudi Arabia, but they are in the hands of unscrupulous people smugglers and, too often, never reach the Yemeni shore, reports say. The United Nations Refugees Agency said more than 200 people had died at sea in 2014 while attempting to reach Yemen. In March for example, at least 42 African migrants drowned in the Arabian Sea off the southern coast of Yemen.

On May 31, 2014, 60 migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia along with two Yemeni crew members drowned in the worst such tragedy off the coast of Yemen, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees said. In the past five years, more than 500,000 people, mostly Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis have reached Yemen via the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea following treacherous journeys on vessels that are often overloaded.