Sana'a, Yemen - More than 1,700 African refuge-seekers have arrived on Yemeni coasts as a new season of people-smuggling gathers steam across the Gulf of Aden, the UN refugee agency reported Tuesday.

"With the onset of calmer weather, smuggling from the Horn of Africa to the Gulf of Aden resumed in August, when 59 boats brought more than 1,700 desperate people to the coasts of Yemen," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC) said in a statement.

It said the figure was three times higher than the number of arrivals in August 2007, when 633 people landed in 10 boats.

The new wave of smuggling resumed earlier this year, as trafficking regularly resumes in September after summer storms subside, the UN agency said.

In the deadliest trip, 12 people on one boat died at the end of August, eight of them after jumping into the sea when a gun battle erupted between the Yemeni military and smugglers near the coast, the statement said. Four others died during the voyage across the Gulf of Aden, which survivors said had been incredibly difficult due to high winds and rough seas.

So far this year, more than 400 people are believed to have drowned attempting the crossing aboard smugglers' boats to Yemen as 24,269 people, mainly Somalis, made the perilous voyage, according to the UNHCR.

Hundreds of people perish every year in the perilous exodus that takes thousands of desperate people, mostly from strife-torn Somalia, to Yemen in small boats run by smugglers operating from Somali ports.

Last year, more than 113,000 people, mostly Somalis, arrived on Yemeni coasts, and more than 1,400 deaths were registered.

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