Children among 139 dead in Djibouti boat disaster

At least 139 migrants, including 15 children, have died and dozens more are still missing after a boat sank off the coast of Djibouti, the UN’s migration office has said.

The boat had been travelling from Djibouti to Yemen with 305 people aboard when it capsized near the port town of Obock on Thursday night. Around 82 people were rescued, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said.

IOM’s Djibouti mission chief, Alexandre Coissac, called the tragedy a “stark reminder” of the dangers migrants face when seeking a new life elsewhere.

Tens of thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa make the perilous journey each year, hoping to reach Gulf countries for safety and work, the agency says.

The organisation revised its death toll from 109 on Sunday after 30 more bodies were recovered.

“This is a devastating loss of life,” Coissac said. “Our thoughts are with the survivors and the families who have lost loved ones or remain without news of their relatives.”

Local authorities are also arranging burials for those who have died, while the survivors, all Ethiopian nationals, have medical care readily available to them.

Yemen remains engulfed in a devastating civil war that has lasted more than a decade. Despite this conflict and growing instability across the wider region, migrants still cross the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen, driven by poverty, insecurity and the growing impacts of climate change.

Since September 10, the IOM said its Displacement Tracking Matrix had observed more than 20,000 “movements” from Ethiopia to Djibouti.

The IOM said it was providing assistance to 64 of the survivors at its response centre in Obock, including healthcare and support to “restore contact with their families”.

The UN agency was working in “close collaboration” with local authorities to help migrants and “prevent deaths at sea and on land”, it added.

More than 900 migrants died or went missing while taking the same route in 2025, during an 18 per cent increase in the number of people attempting the journey, according to IOM statistics.

In March 2026, nine people were killed and 45 went missing following a similar incident.

The conflict in Yemen has also displaced more than 130,000 people across the country, the UN refugee agency said last month.

Thousands of Yemenis have fled to Djibouti to escape the civil war between Houthi fighters and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

Djibouti is a tiny former French colony that sits just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen.