Djibouti Shipwreck Toll Rises to 139
At least 139 migrants have died after their boat capsized off the coast of Djibouti, and another 84 are still missing, in what the UN migration agency has called one of the deadliest wrecks on the route from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
The figure rose from 109 after the bodies of 30 more people were recovered, and the search is still on. The boat had been carrying 305 people from Djibouti toward Yemen when it went down near Guehere, north of Obock, in the early hours of Friday. About 82 people survived. IOM is looking after them at its migrant response centre in Obock, with medical care, food, shelter and protection.
The wreck has not slowed the traffic on the same water. Since 10 September the agency’s tracking has recorded more than 20,000 movements into Djibouti from Ethiopia, as people continue to head for the Gulf even after full-scale fighting returned to Yemen. Over roughly the same weeks more than 3,700 refugees have arrived from Yemen, and 539 Ethiopian migrants have come back from there. Alexandre Coissac, IOM’s chief of mission in Djibouti, told reporters in Geneva on 6 October that the country was dealing with “overlapping emergencies,” movements in both directions, and more than 3,000 people stranded along routes inside Djibouti between 20 and 30 September, often without basic services.
“No one gets into a boat like that unless they believe there is no other safe way,” said IOM director general Amy Pope. She said these deaths could not keep being treated as normal, that safe and legal pathways save lives, and that governments and donors needed to act before the next boat went down.
José Barahona, the UN resident coordinator in Djibouti, said he was deeply saddened by the loss of at least 139 lives, among them children, and that his thoughts were with the survivors and with the families still waiting for news. He recalled the secretary-general’s warning that deaths at sea make the case for protecting people on the move and for opening safer routes. Djiboutian authorities are still searching. The 84 who have not been found are the part of the toll that can still change.
