ADDIS ABABA: At least eight people died and 22 were missing after smugglers attacked a migrant boat and forced them to disembark, the UN’s migration agency said on Wednesday.
The boat was carrying around 150 passengers when it was stopped by smugglers last Thursday, forcing them to disembark “far from the coast.”
“The passengers were left to swim for their lives in open water,” the International Organization for Migration said in a statement.
The IOM and authorities in Djibouti are continuing with a search and rescue operation to find the missing migrants.
It was not clear why the smugglers forced the group to disembark.
Each year, thousands of African migrants brave the “Eastern Route” across the Red Sea from Djibouti to Yemen in the hope of eventually reaching oil-rich Gulf countries.
Last year, the IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the route, with 462 resulting from shipwrecks.
The IOM said at least five bodies from last week’s incident had been found washed up on the Djibouti coast.
“These young people were forced into impossible choices by smugglers who show no regard for human life,” Celestine Frantz, IOM Regional Director for the East, Horn and Southern Africa, said.
“Every life lost at sea is a tragedy that should never happen,” she added.
According to IOM, 2024 “was marked by six major shipwrecks caused by the use of unseaworthy boats, overcrowding of vessels, navigating in poor maritime conditions, and smugglers forcing people to disembark at sea.”
Once in Yemen, migrants often face other threats to their safety.
