Thirty-four migrants died after their boat capsized off Djibouti, the regional head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) announced on Monday.
“The migrants were transported by smugglers,” wrote on Twitter Mohammed Abdiker, IOM director for East and Horn of Africa, deploring the “second such tragedy in little more than a year. months ”after the death of 20 people in the same strait of Bab el-Mandeb on March 4.
“Many children” are among the bodies found, told AFP a source within the IOM, indicating that the capsize “happened around 4:00 in the morning, north of Obock” Djiboutian coast.
“This is a boat that left Yemen with around 60 migrants on board, according to survivors,” the source added.
“The boat would have been chased by the coast guard and there were also, apparently, big waves, the weather was bad”, she explained, stressing that the survivors were “taken in by IOM and the Djiboutian authorities.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which separates Djibouti from Yemen, is a place of heavy trafficking of migrants and refugees, where both Yemenis fleeing the war and Africans going to try their luck in the Arabian Peninsula meet.
In March, around 20 migrants from Djibouti drowned after smugglers threw dozens of people into the sea from an overloaded boat of 200 people.
Two similar incidents were reported in October, causing the death of at least 50 migrants.
“Apprehending and prosecuting human traffickers and smugglers who exploit migrants’ vulnerabilities must become a priority,” Abdiker said in his tweet, deploring “too many lives needlessly lost”.