Sana'a, Yemen  - At least 10 Somali migrants have drowned and six were missing after traffickers in two boats forced them to jump overboard at the end of their trip to Yemen across the Gulf of Aden, the United Nations refugee agency said late on Monday.

The first boat, carrying 44 Somalis, capsized on Saturday evening after it lost balance as smugglers started to push passengers into deep waters off the coast of Hadhramout province, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

It said the boat departed on Friday from the Somali village of Marera, east of the northern port of Bosasso.

Seven bodies washed up on shore in Rujaimah village after 34 other passengers made it to shore, the UN agency said. Three passengers were still missing, it said.

The dead were buried by a local relief agency in a makeshift cemetery in Rujaimah, around 400 kilometres east of the southern Yemeni port city of Aden.

In the second incident, smugglers running a boat carrying 42 Somalis forced passengers to jump into the sea off Shabwa province.

Three people from that boat drowned and three others were missing and are presumed dead, UNHCR said. Thirty people managed to swim ashore, while six others are reported to have remained onboard with the smugglers, who sailed back to Somalia.

UNHCR's representative in Yemen Claire Bourgeois said sea crossings from Somalia to Yemen would increase in the next few weeks as the monsoon period comes to an end.

"Over the past three months, smuggling boats hardly ventured across the Gulf of Aden due to hazardous sailing conditions," Bourgeois said.

Many African migrants, mostly from conflict-torn Somalia, try to reach Yemen, which is seen as a gateway to Europe and the oil-rich countries of the Arabian peninsula. Hundreds of people perish every year in the perilous exodus that takes thousands of desperate Somalis and Ethiopians to Yemen in small boats run by people-traffickers operating from Somali ports.

In the past five days, 17 boats carrying 835 people arrived in Yemen after making the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa, the UNHCR said.

Between January and August, around 36,000 Africans reached the shore of Yemen, an increase of 33 per cent compared to the same period in 2008. Last year, 50,091 people arrived in Yemen, 590 drowned and 359 others were missing and presumed dead. (dpa)