At least 139 migrants, including 15 children, died and 84 others remain missing after an overcrowded boat capsized off the eastern coast of Djibouti, the United Nations migration agency reported Sunday.
The vessel was carrying 305 passengers and heading toward Yemen when it foundered late Thursday night or before dawn on Friday near Guhere, close to the port town of Obock, according to the International Organization for Migration. More than 80 people survived the shipwreck, all of whom were Ethiopian nationals, the agency said.
Overwhelmed Rescuers and Unnamed Graves
Rescuers pulled dozens of survivors from the water, but emergency teams quickly became overwhelmed by the number of bodies washing ashore. Alexandre Coissac, the agency’s chief of mission in Djibouti, told The Associated Press that passengers boarded the vessel during the evening of Oct. 8 and that it went down shortly afterward near the coastline, primarily due to overcrowding.
Coissac noted that the official tally of 139 dead includes only victims buried by local authorities, while other bodies buried by fellow migrants have not yet been added pending official verification. The agency had revised its count upward on Sunday after recovery teams located 30 additional bodies.
“What is terrible is that they were buried with no names, in a common grave, like in a war situation,” Coissac told the AP. “They all have a mother, a father, and we may never learn what happened.”
Survivors were transported to an agency response center in Obock to receive medical attention for swallowing seawater, as well as psychological counseling. Officials provided phones so survivors could contact their families, while others learned at the facility that their relatives had drowned during the crossing, the agency said.
Escalating Movement Along a Perilous Corridor
The Bab el-Mandeb strait, which narrows to about 12 miles between Djibouti and Yemen, serves as one of the busiest and most dangerous migration routes in the world. Each year, tens of thousands of people from the Horn of Africa attempt the crossing in hopes of reaching wealthy Gulf nations for employment, despite severe regional instability.
According to the migration agency’s displacement tracking systems, more than 20,000 movements from Ethiopia into Djibouti were logged after Sept. 10 alone. During the previous year, over half a million people attempted the journey toward Yemen, with at least 900 dying or disappearing along the way.
Migrants continue to risk the sea crossing despite ongoing conflicts across the region. Yemen has endured more than a decade of civil war, and fighting recently flared again between government troops and Houthi fighters. In recent weeks, at least 2,000 people have fled Yemen into Djibouti to escape violence, moving in the opposite direction of the Ethiopian migrants who boarded the ill-fated boat.
“No one gets into a boat like that unless they believe there is no other safe way,” said Amy Pope, director-general of the International Organization for Migration. “We cannot keep treating these deaths as normal. Safe and legal pathways save lives.”
Search and rescue efforts conducted by Djiboutian authorities continued off the coast on Sunday, though officials cautioned that the death toll could increase further as hopes diminish for the dozens of travelers who remain unaccounted for.
