Tragedy Off Djibouti As Migrant Boat Capsizes Leaving 139 Dead And Dozens Missing

At least 139 migrants, including 15 children, have died and more than 80 are missing after a boat carrying about 305 people capsized while sailing from Djibouti to Yemen, the UN's migration agency reported on Sunday.

According to survivor accounts cited by the International Organisation for Migration, the vessel overturned near Guhere, north of Djibouti's port town of Obock, during the night of October 8 into October 9. More than 80 people survived the shipwreck, all of whom are Ethiopian citizens, the agency noted. The Ethiopian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

The IOM raised its initial death toll of 109 after 30 more bodies were recovered. Among the bodies recovered earlier were 52 men, 42 women, and 15 children. Alexandre Coissac, the IOM chief of mission in Djibouti, stated that their teams are on the ground alongside local authorities to provide emergency assistance, emphasizing that the tragedy serves as a stark reminder of the dangers migrants face along this migration corridor in pursuit of economic opportunities.

Djiboutian authorities are continuing search and rescue operations while providing medical care to survivors and arranging burials, according to the IOM. This disaster follows renewed fighting in Ethiopia's Tigray region, occurring nearly four years after a peace agreement concluded a devastating two-year civil war there. Data from the IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix indicates that over 20,000 incoming movements have been recorded from Ethiopia to Djibouti since September 10.

Each year, tens of thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa travel through Djibouti to cross the Bab Al Mandeb strait to Yemen in hopes of reaching Gulf countries. These perilous crossings persist despite ongoing fighting on Yemen's Red Sea coast between government forces and Iran-backed Houthi rebels since early September. Concurrently, more than 3,700 people have fled the fighting and made the crossing from Yemen to Djibouti, as reported by the IOM.