At Least 139 Migrants Dead After Boat Capsizes Off Djibouti

At least 139 migrants, including at least 15 children, have died and about 84 others are missing after an overcrowded boat carrying 305 people capsized off Djibouti while sailing toward Yemen, the UN migration agency said on Sunday, October 11. Around 82 people survived what officials described as one of the deadliest shipwrecks recorded on this migration route.

File photo: The rocky coastline of Djibouti, near the Gulf of Tadjoura. The boat capsized north of the port town of Obock.

A Night Crossing That Ended in Disaster

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the vessel capsized near Guhere, north of the port town of Obock, during the night of October 8-9. The account comes from survivors who spoke to the agency after reaching shore.

The boat had set out from Djibouti for Yemen, the first sea leg of a journey that many migrants hope will eventually take them to wealthier Gulf countries in search of work. Instead, the crossing ended within Djiboutian waters, soon after departure according to the IOM's chief of mission in Djibouti, Alexandre Coissac, who spoke to reporters about the response.

Photographs shared by the UN agency showed worn-out sandals and sneakers washed up on the shore, a small and grim trace of the hundreds of people who had been on board. Officials said the exact sequence of events, and a final confirmed passenger count, remain under investigation.

The Toll Rose Through the Weekend

The death toll climbed as recovery work continued over the weekend. The IOM initially reported 109 deaths. That figure later rose to at least 139 after about 30 more bodies were recovered, while the number of people still unaccounted for fell to around 84.

Among the first confirmed group of victims were men, women and at least 15 children, according to reports citing the agency. Officials also cautioned that the official count may still change. Reporting by the Associated Press noted that some bodies buried by fellow migrants had not yet been included in the formal totals while authorities worked to verify them.

Djiboutian authorities are continuing search and rescue operations along the coast near Obock. Local authorities are also providing medical care to survivors and arranging burials for the dead, the IOM said. Neither the Djibouti government nor a spokesperson for Ethiopia's government had commented in the initial reporting on Sunday.

Survivors Taken to Obock

About 82 people survived the shipwreck. The IOM said the survivors were all Ethiopian nationals, and that its teams were assisting them at the Migrant Response Centre in Obock with emergency help, medical care and psychological support.

Coissac said IOM teams were on the ground alongside local authorities to provide emergency assistance, and he described the wreck as a stark reminder of the dangers migrants face along this corridor as they look for economic opportunities. Other agency officials described survivors as deeply distressed, with some still unsure whether relatives who were travelling with them were alive.

For families in Ethiopia and elsewhere in the Horn of Africa, the coming days are likely to bring a painful wait for confirmed names. Identification on this route is often slow, because many travellers carry few documents and because passenger lists for these informal crossings rarely exist.

Why Migrants Risk the Crossing to Yemen

The sea passage from Djibouti across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen is the central link in what aid agencies call the Eastern Route, running from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. Thousands of people, most of them from Ethiopia and Somalia, travel through Djibouti each year and attempt the short but dangerous crossing, often at night and often in overcrowded boats.

The aim for most is not to stay in Yemen. It is to pass through it, despite the war there, and reach Gulf states where they hope to find work and send money home. The IOM has documented heavy traffic along the route through Djibouti for several years, and it says the number of people attempting the journey rose again in the past year.

The dangers are well documented and they do not end at the water's edge. Migrants face accidents at sea, trafficking, exploitation and arbitrary arrest and detention once they are on land, according to the agency. Even so, the flow has continued.

Conflict at Both Ends of the Route

Pressure is building at both ends of the crossing. In Ethiopia, fighting that broke out last month in the Tigray region has been described in reporting as the biggest escalation since the 2020-2022 Tigray war. Residents have told Reuters they saw forced recruitment of young men by Tigrayan forces, a claim the rebels have denied, and the renewed fighting has raised fears of a wider regional conflict.

An IOM situation report covering late September found that Ethiopian migrants leaving the country cited difficult living conditions, including the impact of drought. Some also said they were fleeing conflict and forced recruitment. An agency official said people continue to use the route even as conditions in both Ethiopia and Yemen change, although the volume and direction of movement can shift over time.

At the other end, Yemen is seeing its most serious escalation in fighting since a UN-brokered truce in 2022, between Saudi Arabia-backed government forces and the Iran-backed Houthis. The IOM said displacement inside Yemen surged in recent weeks, and that more than 3,700 people had fled Yemen by sea to Djibouti as of last week — a reverse flow that underlines how unstable the destination country itself has become.

File photo: Satellite view of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti and Yemen, the sea crossing at the heart of the Eastern Route.

What This Means

This shipwreck is not an isolated accident. According to the IOM's Missing Migrants Project, more than 900 migrants died or went missing along the Eastern Route in 2025 alone, as the number of people undertaking the journey increased. A single boat carrying 305 people shows how much risk is being concentrated into individual crossings, where one failure at night, far from help, can kill more than a hundred people at once.

It also shows the limits of warnings. The route's dangers — overcrowding, unseaworthy vessels, trafficking networks, war at the destination — are known to the agencies that work along it, and are likely known to many of the people who still choose to travel. What drives the flow, on the evidence of the IOM's own interviews, is a mix of drought, poverty and conflict at home, weighed against the hope of paid work in the Gulf. Until those pressures ease, or safer legal pathways expand, officials expect people to keep coming to Obock and attempting the crossing.

File photo: An IOM worker assists Ethiopian migrants. The agency is supporting survivors of the shipwreck at its centre in Obock.

What Happens Next

In the immediate term, the focus stays on the coast north of Obock: continued search and recovery work, medical care and support for the 82 survivors, burials for the dead, and the slow process of confirming identities and informing families. The confirmed death toll may rise further if more of the roughly 84 missing people are found, or if bodies already buried locally are formally verified and added to the count.

Beyond the emergency response, the wreck is likely to renew calls from migration agencies for stronger action against smuggling networks and for more resources along the Eastern Route. Whether it changes behaviour is a harder question. On past evidence from this corridor, a disaster of this scale dominates headlines for a few days — and then the boats resume, because the reasons people board them have not changed.