Children among 16 dead after asylum-seeker boat capsizes off Djibouti – UN

At least 16 people are dead and 28 others are missing after a boat carrying asylum seekers capsized off the coast of the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, according to the UN’s migration agency.

The accident occurred on Monday night, about two weeks after another boat carrying mainly Ethiopian asylum seekers sank off the Djibouti coast, killing several dozen people, on the perilous so-called “eastern migration route” from Africa to the Middle East.

“Tragedy as boat capsizes off Djibouti coast with 77 migrants on board including children,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Tuesday in a post on X.

Ethiopia’s ambassador to Djibouti, Berhanu Tsegaye, said on X that the boat was carrying Ethiopians from Yemen and that the accident occurred off Godoria in northeastern Djibouti.

The IOM said at the time that the bodies of 38 people, including children, were recovered, while another six people were missing.

The Ethiopian embassy had said the boat was carrying Ethiopians from Djibouti to war-torn Yemen.

In February, the IOM said that according to its Missing Migrants Project at least 698 people, including women and children, had died crossing the Gulf of Aden from Djibouti to Yemen last year.