Djibouti shipwreck leaves 139 migrants dead, IOM says
The boat carried 305 people toward Yemen and sank shortly after leaving shore. More than 80 survived, all of them Ethiopian.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN agency that assists migrants, counts at least 139 dead and 84 missing after a boat sank off Djibouti, the small Horn of Africa country on the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Fifteen of the dead are children, according to CBS News, which relays the IOM's tally.
The vessel carried 305 people and went down on the night of Oct. 8 to 9 near Guhere, north of Obock, as it crossed toward Yemen. The IOM calls it the deadliest shipwreck recorded off Djibouti. It attributes the sinking mainly to overloading.
The toll changed within a day. An earlier IOM tally, published Oct. 11, gave 109 dead and more than 116 missing, according to the agency's statement. The new count includes only bodies buried by Djiboutian authorities. Those buried by the migrants themselves will be added once verified, so the total may rise.
More than 80 people survived, all of them Ethiopian. The IOM is treating 64 at its response center in Obock, with medical care and psychological support. Alexandre Coissac, the IOM's chief of mission in Djibouti, spoke of a "devastating loss of life" and said local authorities were overwhelmed by the bodies that kept arriving at the shore at once.
"We cannot keep treating these deaths as normal," said Amy Pope, the IOM's director general.
Tens of thousands of people travel the route to Yemen, mostly Ethiopians looking for work in the Gulf states, despite the US-Israeli war on Iran and the fighting that resumed in Yemen last month. Since Sept. 10, the IOM has recorded more than 20 000 incoming movements into Djibouti from Ethiopia. The agency estimates that more than 900 people died or went missing on this route in 2025, while the flow grew 18%.
The IOM and its director general call for safe and legal migration pathways. The final death toll, which the agency has not fixed, is still pending.
