139 migrants, including children, dead as overcrowded boat capsizes

At least 139 migrants, 15 of them children, died when an overcrowded boat carrying 305 people capsized off Djibouti on its way to Yemen, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Sunday. About 84 people are still missing.

The boat sank close to shore near Guhere, north of the port town of Obock, on the night of 8–9 October, shortly after the migrants boarded. Alexandre Coissac, the IOM’s chief of mission in Djibouti, said overcrowding was the main cause.

The agency first reported 109 deaths and more than 116 missing on Friday. The toll rose as more bodies washed ashore. Coissac said local authorities “were overwhelmed with all the bodies that kept coming at once towards the shore.”

The official count covers only bodies buried by Djiboutian authorities. Others were buried by fellow migrants and will be added once verified, so the toll is expected to rise. Nine of the dead children were girls and six were boys.

More than 80 people survived, all of them Ethiopian. They are being treated at an IOM centre in Obock for swallowing seawater and are receiving psychological support. Coissac said they were “in a state of shock”. Some have learned that relatives died. Others were given phones to call home.

“This is a devastating loss of life,” Coissac said. Amy Pope, the IOM’s director-general, said: “No one gets into a boat like that unless they believe there is no other safe way.”

Djiboutian authorities are still searching and are burying the dead. Neither the Djiboutian nor the Ethiopian government responded to requests for comment from Reuters. No smugglers have been publicly identified.

The route, which runs from the Horn of Africa through Djibouti and across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen, is one of the world’s busiest and deadliest migration corridors. Most of those who take it are young Ethiopians trying to reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states for work.

According to the IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, more than 900 people died or went missing on it in 2025, while the number of people attempting the crossing rose 18 percent.

Migrants are still crossing into Yemen even though fighting there between the Saudi-backed government and the Houthis has escalated. Thousands of Yemenis are fleeing the other way, to Djibouti. Renewed conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region since late September has added to the pressure to leave.