Boat disaster off Djibouti: at least 139 migrants dead, 84 missing
The overcrowded boat carrying 305 people was bound for Yemen. Fifteen children are among the dead, and the U.N. migration agency IOM says the toll could rise further.
Archive image · Photo: MC1 Robert Ressler / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
At least 139 people, including 15 children, drowned when a boat capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. Another 84 remain missing. The vessel, carrying 305 people, left near Guhere north of Obock for Yemen on the evening of Oct. 8 and sank shortly afterward close to shore, mainly because of overcrowding, according to the IOM.
More than 80 people survived, all of them Ethiopian nationals. They are receiving medical and psychological care at an IOM center in Obock. The initial toll of 109 rose as more bodies were recovered, and it could climb further because only victims buried by authorities have been counted so far.
"What is terrible is that they were buried with no names, in a common grave, like in a war situation," IOM chief of mission Alexandre Coissac told AP. IOM Director-General Amy Pope called for safe and legal migration pathways. More than 900 people died or went missing along this migration route from the Horn of Africa via Yemen to the Gulf states last year.