Sana'a, Yemen  - Around 170 passengers are still missing after a ship loaded with around 300 Somali and Ethiopian migrants capsized off the coast of Yemen Saturday, Yemeni coast guard officials said.

A coast guard official in Red Sea port of Houdieda said 130 people managed to swim ashore or were rescued by coast guard teams and local fishermen.

Three bodies have been recovered so far, the official, who asked not to be identified, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

He said the wooden ship hit a reef in a storm, tearing a hole in its hull.

The Yemeni Interior Ministry said the ship was stricken off the al-Makhaa area in western Yemen near the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, the southern gateway of the Red Sea.

It said coast guard authorities rushed rescue teams to search for survivors.

"The fate of most of the passengers remains unknown," the ministry said in a statement.

In a separate accident, seven people drowned and around 13 others were still missing after a smugglers' boat carrying them capsized off the southern Yemeni coast, rescuers said.

They said 99 people swam to the shore of Dahumah near the town of Ahwar, around 220 kilometres east of the southern port city of Aden.

A Somali woman was seriously injured and was rushed to a hospital in Aden, rescuers told dpa.

The boat transferred the migrants through the shark-infested Gulf of Aden from Bosasso in northern Somalia.

A breakdown of the dead and survivors was not immediately available.

Many African migrants, mostly from strife-torn Somalia, try to reach Yemen, which they see as a gateway to oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

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 smugglers operating from Somali ports.

More than 50,000 migrants, the vast majority of them Somalis, resorted to smugglers for the treacherous sea crossing between Somalia and Yemen in 2008, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

At least 590 people drowned and another 359 were reported missing as result of crossings gone wrong, often as a result of smugglers forcing the migrants overboard, UNHCR said.

Since the outbreak of civil war in Somalia, Yemen has become a magnet for refugees fleeing violence and drought. The country is seen as a gateway to Europe and the oil-rich countries of the Arabian peninsula. (dpa)