So­ma­li­a’s gov­ern­ment on Sat­ur­day blamed the Saudi-led coali­tion for Fri­day’s at­tack on a boat that killed at least 42 So­mali refugees off the coast of war-torn Yemen, call­ing the as­sault by a mil­i­tary ves­sel and a he­li­copter gun­ship “hor­rific”.

So­ma­lia urged the US-sup­ported coali­tion to in­ves­ti­gate. The boat was packed with dozens of refugees, some of them women and chil­dren.

“What hap­pened there was a hor­rific and ter­ri­ble prob­lem in­flicted on in­no­cent So­mali peo­ple. The Saudi-led coali­tion fight­ing in Yemen is re­spon­si­ble for it,” So­ma­li­a’s for­eign min­is­ter, Ab­dis­alam Omer, said on state-run ra­dio.

He said Yemen’s gov­ern­ment also must give an ex­pla­na­tion for the at­tack and that those re­spon­si­ble must be brought to jus­tice.

So­mali Prime Min­is­ter Has­san Ali Khaire in a sep­a­rate state­ment called the at­tack “atro­cious” and “ap­palling.”

Yemen’s Houthi rebels also have blamed the Saudi-led coali­tion. There has been no coali­tion com­ment.

The at­tack came just weeks af­ter So­ma­li­a’s re­cently elected pres­i­dent, the So­mali-Amer­i­can Mo­hamed Ab­dul­lahi Mo­hamed, chose to make Saudi Ara­bia his first of­fi­cial for­eign visit over­seas.

The at­tack high­lighted the per­ils of a heav­ily used mi­gra­tion route run­ning from the Horn of Africa to the oil-rich Gulf, right through Yemen’s civil war.

Lau­rent De Boeck, the head of the Yemeni of­fice for the In­ter­na­tional Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Mi­gra­tion, has said the agency be­lieves all those on board the boat were reg­is­tered refugees.

A Yemeni traf­ficker who sur­vived the at­tack said the refugees had been try­ing to reach Su­dan. So­ma­li­a’s for­eign min­is­ter on Sat­ur­day said their ul­ti­mate des­ti­na­tion had been So­ma­lia.

The traf­ficker, al-Has­san Ghaleb Mo­hammed, said the boat left from Ras Arra, along the south­ern coast­line in Yemen’s Hodei­dah province, and was near the Bab al-Mandab strait when the at­tack oc­curred.

Mo­hammed de­scribed a scene of panic in which the ter­ri­fied refugees waved flash­lights, ap­par­ently to show they were not com­bat­ants. He said the he­li­copter then stopped fir­ing, but only af­ter dozens had been killed.

Video of the af­ter­math showed dozens of slain mi­grants, along with oth­ers who suf­fered gun­shot wounds, lost limbs, or had bro­ken arms and legs.

The Saudi-led coali­tion has been heav­ily bom­bard­ing the coast around the port of Hodei­dah where it ac­cuses the Houthis of smug­gling weapons in small boats.

The coali­tion be­gan strik­ing the rebels and their al­lies in March 2015, hop­ing to drive the rebels from the cap­i­tal, Sanaa, and re­store the in­ter­na­tion­ally recog­nised gov­ern­ment.

The rebels re­main in con­trol of Sanaa and much of north­ern Yemen, and the con­flict, which has killed an es­ti­mated 10,000 civil­ians, is in a stale­mate.

Since the be­gin­ning of the air cam­paign, Yemen has been un­der an air and sea em­bargo. The coali­tion is the only party to the con­flict with naval and air forces, and rights groups have doc­u­mented hun­dreds of airstrikes in which civil­ians have been killed.

De­spite the fight­ing, African mi­grants con­tinue to ar­rive in the war-torn coun­try, where there is no cen­tral au­thor­ity to pre­vent them from trav­el­ling on­ward to a bet­ter life in neigh­bour­ing oil-rich Saudi Ara­bia.

More than 111,500 peo­ple landed on Yemen’s shores last year, up from around 100,000 the year be­fore, ac­cord­ing to the Re­gional Mixed Mi­gra­tion Sec­re­tariat, a group­ing of in­ter­na­tional agen­cies that mon­i­tors mi­gra­tion in the area.

The tur­moil has left refugees vul­ner­a­ble to abuse at the hands of the armed traf­fick­ing rings, many of which are be­lieved to be con­nected to the mul­ti­ple armed groups in­volved in the war.

Refugees have fled So­ma­lia over its past quar­ter-cen­tury of chaos, des­per­ate to avoid war­lord-led clashes, at­tacks by home­grown ex­trem­ist group al-Shabab and deadly drought.