34 people drowned when a boat travelling from northern Somalia to Yemen sank in heavy seas in the latest blow for Somali coastal communities already hit by the Asian tsunami.
'37 people were on board and only three managed to reach shore,' Yusuf Ismail Baribari, a spokesman for Somalia's fledgling government, said of the incident.
The boat was travelling from Bossasso in northern Somalia to Mekelle in southern Yemen carrying 37 people and 1,200 goats and sheep when it sank off the Somali coast.
Relief effort for tsunami victims
Baribari said relief agencies were rushing aid to communities in northeastern Somalia devastated by the Asian tsunami on 26 December, adding his government believed the death toll had risen to 142.
There was no independent confirmation of that number. Reports from the few aid workers on the ground in the worst hit Puntland region say 114 were killed when the waves struck.
Most of them were fishermen who had not come home since they set sail on 26 December, shortly before the waves triggered by southern Asia's undersea earthquake 6,000km to the east began pounding Africa.
