Aden, Aug 3 : More than 20 migrants died while dozens remain missing after a smuggling boat carrying around 150 African migrants sank off the coast of Abyan Province in southern Yemen, Yemeni sources said Sunday.

An anonymous local official told Xinhua that the boat overturned late Saturday night at around 11 p.m. local time (2000 GMT) due to strong winds.

Field teams recovered more than 20 bodies from the shores of Shaqra and Zinjibar cities on Sunday morning, while 12 survivors were rescued and transferred to Shaqra General Hospital for treatment, the official said, noting that dozens of migrants remain missing, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Security authorities in Abyan said they were continuing a large-scale humanitarian operation to recover the bodies of the drowned migrants.

A statement from the Abyan Security Directorate said that security forces are carrying out a wide-ranging humanitarian operation to retrieve the bodies of a large number of irregular migrants of Ethiopian origin, who drowned while attempting to illegally enter Yemeni territory aboard smuggling boats from the Horn of Africa.

According to the statement, authorities have begun transporting the bodies to hospitals in Zinjibar as part of intensive rescue and humanitarian efforts, despite limited resources. Many bodies were found scattered along different coastal areas, raising concerns that more victims may have been lost at sea.

The security authorities in Abyan called on all relevant local and international organisations to intervene urgently and take measures to halt the illegal migration flow through Yemeni territorial waters, said the statement.

African migrants continue to flow into Yemen, and upon arrival, face extremely harsh conditions in a country suffering from a decade-long conflict and what the United Nations describes as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

/IANS