Shipwreck off Djibouti leaves 38 migrants dead
Thirty-eight bodies, including those of children, have been found after a shipwreck off the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti, the UN's International Organisation for Migration said on Tuesday.
The IOM said in a post on X that at least six other people were missing and presumed dead after the "tragic shipwreck", while 22 survivors were being helped by its Djibouti office as well as the local authorities.
The Ethiopian embassy in Djibouti said the accident occurred on Monday and involved a boat carrying 60 Ethiopian migrants from Djibouti to Yemen.
It took place near the coast of Godoria in the northeast of Djibouti, the embassy added in a statement on X.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of African migrants brave the perilous "Eastern Route" across the Red Sea and through war-scarred Yemen to reach Saudi Arabia, a desperate ploy to pull their families out of grinding poverty.
"Every year, more than 200,000 migrants leave the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Djibouti and make the perilous journey by land and sea to reach Middle Eastern countries," the Ethiopian embassy said on Facebook.
It said that in the last five years, 189 of its citizens had lost their lives in boat accidents alone.
"Our citizens are putting themselves and their families in grave danger," the embassy said.
People should not be "deceived" by human traffickers and called for the judiciary to take action against them, it added.
The IOM's Djibouti office said on X that almost 1,000 migrants have died or gone missing on the Eastern Route since 2014.
In August last year, Human Rights Watch accused Saudi border guards of killing "at least hundreds" of Ethiopians trying to cross into the Gulf kingdom between March 2022 and June 2023, using explosive weapons in some cases.
Riyadh dismissed the group's findings as "unfounded and not based on reliable sources".
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