DJIBOUTI — At least 109 migrants, including 15 children, have died and scores more are missing after an overcrowded boat heading from Djibouti to Yemen capsized late Thursday, the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration said, BBC News and Al Jazeera reported.
The BBC, citing the IOM, said the boat was carrying 350 people when it went down near the port town of Obock and that around 80 people were rescued. Al Jazeera, citing the agency’s Sunday statement, said survivors put the sinking near Guhere, off Djibouti’s eastern coast facing the Gulf of Aden and the Bab al-Mandab strait, between Thursday night and before dawn on Friday, with more than 300 people aboard and more than 116 still missing. All of the more than 80 survivors are Ethiopian, and Djiboutian search and rescue operations were continuing.
The IOM said the bodies recovered were those of 52 men, 42 women, nine girls and six boys. “This is a devastating loss of life,” said Alexandre Coissac, the agency’s chief of mission in Djibouti. “This tragedy is a stark reminder of the dangers faced by migrants along this migration corridor as they seek economic opportunities,” he said, according to Al Jazeera. The agency is providing medical care and help contacting families to 64 survivors at its response center in Obock, and local authorities are arranging burials.
Tens of thousands of people from the Horn of Africa cross the narrow Bab al-Mandab each year hoping to reach Gulf countries for work and safety, despite the war in Yemen, where fighting between government forces and the Houthis resumed last month. The IOM said it has recorded more than 20,000 movements from Ethiopia into Djibouti since Sept. 10. More than 900 migrants died or went missing on the route in 2025, according to IOM figures cited by the BBC, and in March this year nine people were killed and 45 went missing in a similar sinking.
Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera
—
