A boat carrying migrants from Djibouti to Yemen capsized off the coast of Djibouti. According to the United Nations at least 139 people drowned, among them at least fifteen children, and 84 others are missing (Reuters, NRC, de Volkskrant, PBS, Le Monde, CNA). An initial Reuters report still spoke of 109 dead; that figure has been overtaken. According to one source, Livemint, there were 305 people on board; that is not confirmed. The migrants wanted to cross the Bab el-Mandeb strait, on their way to the Gulf states (NRC). We have not seen the cause, nationalities or number of survivors in the reports.
With 139 dead and 84 still missing, this is a very serious disaster. It shows how dangerous the crossing to the Gulf states is for people from the Horn of Africa, who often depend on smugglers. Yemen is also a war zone itself: the Houthis control large parts of the country and have been attacking Saudi airports for days.
No direct consequences for the Netherlands have been reported and there are no reports of Dutch victims. The accident does touch on a debate that also runs in The Hague and Brussels: how Europe and the UN deal with migration routes and smuggling networks.
Figures on shipwrecks are almost always revised, here already from 109 to 139. In the coming days, watch the final death toll, whether the UN names a cause and what the search for the 84 missing turns up.
Reuters · NRC · de Volkskrant · PBS NewsHour · CNA · Le Monde · Tagesschau (Oct. 11)
At least 139 migrants drowned off Djibouti, 84 missing. The boat was heading for Yemen, where war rages
A boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti, bound for Yemen. The United Nations speaks of at least 139 dead, among them at least fifteen children, and 84 missing. An earlier figure of 109 is out of date.
At least 139 people drowned when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the coast of Djibouti, on its way to Yemen. Another 84 people are missing. That is what the United Nations says, according to reports by Reuters, NRC, de Volkskrant and PBS, among others. Among the dead are at least fifteen children. The accident was reported on Sunday. An initial Reuters report still spoke of 109 dead; later NRC, de Volkskrant, PBS and Le Monde reported the higher figure of 139. According to the Indian news site Livemint, there were 305 people on board. We have not seen that number from a second source and therefore leave it out of the headline.
The migrants wanted to cross the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the narrow passage between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, on their way to the Gulf states (NRC). The strait, about thirty kilometers wide at its narrowest point, has made the news lately mainly because of the Houthi rebels, the paper writes. The route has long been considered one of the busiest migration routes in the world: people from East Africa seek work in the rich Gulf states via Yemen, often with smugglers and in unseaworthy boats. Anyone who arrives in Yemen ends up in a country that has been at war for years and where the Houthis control large areas. That makes help for survivors and the search for the missing especially difficult, although we have not yet seen anything about that in the reports.
Much is still unknown. The reports we saw name no cause of the accident, no nationalities of the victims and no number of survivors. It is also unclear where exactly off the coast the boat capsized. Because 84 people are missing, the death toll may still change. A link with the Houthi attacks on the airport in Riyadh, which dominated the news the same days, has not been reported. Dutch victims have not been reported either. The UN figure is an interim count, not the result of an investigation. Such counts are often revised in the days after a disaster, as already happened here, because often nobody knows exactly how many people were on board. The Indonesian site Detik writes that the boat was overloaded; that, too, is a single source. What the UN and the authorities of Djibouti report in the coming days about the search for the 84 missing will determine whether the death toll rises further.