Migrant Boat Capsizes Off Djibouti, Death Toll Climbs to 139

Within hours of the first count, the death toll from a migrant boat capsizing off Djibouti rose by 30. The UN initially reported 109 dead and 116 missing ^[1]. A later report from France 24 put the toll at at least 139 dead, with more than 84 still missing ^[2]. Neither figure is final, and the number of people who were on board is itself disputed. The International Organization for Migration said roughly 350 people were aboard the vessel, which was travelling from Djibouti to Yemen ^[3]. The IOM also said at least 15 children were among the dead ^[4].

The boat went down near a port town on Djibouti’s coast. Djibouti sits at the southern mouth of the Bab al-Mandab strait, where the Gulf of Aden meets the Red Sea. Yemen lies just across the water, and its Red Sea coast is controlled by the Houthis, the Iran-backed movement whose attacks on commercial shipping since late 2023 have made the strait one of the most closely watched maritime chokepoints in the world. That context matters for a migrant route that predates the Houthi campaign by decades. Smugglers have long moved East Africans across the strait toward Yemen and onward to Gulf states, and the crossing is dangerous in ordinary weather.

What has changed is the pattern of enforcement around it. Western naval missions in the Red Sea, including the EU’s Aspides operation and the US-led coalition formed in 2024, have focused largely on protecting merchant vessels and intercepting Houthi weapons shipments. Their patrols are not designed to inspect small, overloaded wooden boats crossing a narrow strait at night. Coastal patrols on the Djiboutian side have limited capacity. The result is a gap in which smuggling networks operate with little interdiction, and the people in those boats bear the consequences when a vessel is overloaded and goes over. This is an assessment based on the pattern of enforcement, not a finding any source has made about this specific sinking.

The security backdrop also shapes the routes. Houthi control of Yemen’s western coast means that a boat leaving Djibouti is headed into a territory where the authorities are a militant movement under international sanctions, and where the humanitarian system has been strained by years of war. The UN and IOM have repeatedly warned about conditions for migrants inside Houthi-held areas, including detention and abuse, and the Djibouti crossing is one of the links in a chain that connects the Horn of Africa to a war zone.

The numbers themselves reflect the difficulty of tracking this route. Survivors’ accounts, coastguard records and the boat’s manifest, if one exists, will have to be reconciled before the toll is settled. Until then, the gap between 225 people aboard and 350 is a measure of how little official oversight exists on these crossings. Any final count will need to account for the passengers who were never registered anywhere.