Somalis Finally End Nightmarish Voyage

Desperate Somali refugees drank seawater in the last days of a harrowing two weeks spent crammed into the holds and on the deck of a decrepit freighter that sailed into Aden harbor Wednesday.

After food and water supplies aboard ship dwindled to nothing, some of the more than 2,000 men, women and children became convinced that after escaping gun battles and famine in their native land they were destined to die on the Indian Ocean.

“For three days we had no water, no food, no hope. We were in so much danger we were sure we would die,” said Safiya Mohammed Ali, 25.

Somehow everyone survived, but about 300 passengers suffered exposure and disease, refugees said. Three women gave birth.

A French warship delivered food and water to the 1,600-ton Samaa-1 after it reached the coast of Yemen on Monday.

The refugees swarmed aboard two weeks ago when the vessel was anchored at Merka, south of Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. The ship sailed five days later.

The ship’s Pakistani captain, Nisar Ahmed, slumped in a chair on the bridge after docking. “It was hell,” he said.

He contended that the shortage of food and water was the fault of a Somali warlord, Abdul Wahab Haji Mohammed, who chartered the vessel to make money from the refugees, and not that of the Dubai-based owners, Samaa Asia Shipping.

In Aden, the Somalis flooded down the gangplank, keeping medical workers from the French group Medicins Sans Frontieres from getting on board.

Reporters who made it aboard found sick people in the holds lying on heaped garbage rotting since the early days of the voyage. Corrugated tin sheets that hung over the side for use as latrines had not been washed down, and the excrement drying in the hot sun fouled the air.

It was impossible to move about without stepping on people, baggage, garbage or makeshift latrines.

Despite the stench and crowding no one was evacuated in the ambulance waiting on the dock.