139 dead in migrant boat disaster off Djibouti

At least 139 people have died and a further 84 are missing after a makeshift boat carrying migrants capsized off Djibouti overnight on 8 to 9 October 2026, according to a toll relayed by the United Nations on Sunday 11 October.

The vessel went down near Guhere, north of the port town of Obock. It was carrying around 305 migrants, most of them Ethiopian nationals, bound for Yemen.

More than 80 survivors, all of them Ethiopian, were rescued by teams from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and local authorities.

The tragedy is the latest on the "Eastern Route", a heavily used and particularly perilous migration corridor between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.