Rescue operation recovers 266 survivors as UN warns deadliest season on the route is simply starting
Printed On 26 Mar 2026
At the very least 9 folks have died, and 45 others are lacking, after a ship carrying greater than 300 migrants and refugees sank off the coast of Djibouti, the Worldwide Group for Migration (IOM) has mentioned.
The Djiboutian coastguard mentioned on Thursday that it launched an emergency in a single day operation after the vessel, a conventional galba-type boat full of 320 folks, went down close to Guehere within the north of the nation late on Tuesday.
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Rescue groups have been quickly strengthened with extra personnel and diving models from the coastguard’s Search and Rescue Division, pulling 266 survivors from the water.
The IOM mentioned all these rescued have been Ethiopian nationals, who have been receiving help at its Migrant Response Centre within the close by city of Obock.
Search operations for the lacking have been persevering with, a coastguard official informed Al Jazeera on Thursday.
“This tragic shipwreck might sadly mark the primary of many incidents this 12 months,” mentioned Tanja Pacifico, IOM’s chief of mission in Djibouti.
The incident “comes at a time when the new season is simply beginning in Djibouti, bringing rougher seas and robust winds that place migrants at even better danger,” she mentioned.
A judicial investigation into the circumstances of the sinking has been opened by the Djiboutian coastguard’s Analysis, Investigation and Judicial Affairs Brigade.
The boat was making an attempt one of many world’s most perilous migration crossings alongside the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the place Djibouti and Yemen are separated by as little as 20 kilometres (12 miles) of open water at their narrowest level.
Tens of 1000’s of individuals from the Horn of Africa area annually try and cross that brief stretch of sea in an try to achieve the Gulf states.
Those that survive the crossing then face a gruelling and harmful overland journey via war-torn Yemen, earlier than making an attempt to achieve Saudi Arabia throughout its southern border.
Many by no means full the journey, and based on IOM, migrants alongside this so-called Jap Route usually face arbitrary arrest, trafficking, violence and detention at each stage of the journey.
IOM knowledge reveals that greater than 506,000 folks moved alongside it in 2025, an 18 p.c improve on the earlier 12 months, pushed partly by smugglers adopting extra distant coastal paths via Djibouti particularly to evade police checkpoints.
In keeping with the IOM, transit actions via Obock alone rose by 58 p.c final 12 months.
Roughly 922 folks died or went lacking on the Jap Route in 2025, almost double the 558 recorded the 12 months earlier than, making it the deadliest 12 months since IOM started monitoring the route in 2014.
The UN’s migration company recorded not less than 7,667 migration deaths worldwide final 12 months, roughly 21 every day. “These deaths will not be inevitable,” IOM Director Common Amy Pope mentioned in February.
“When protected pathways are out of attain, individuals are compelled into harmful journeys and into the fingers of smugglers and traffickers.”
Roughly 95 p.c of migrants on the Jap Route cite financial causes for leaving, with IOM projecting that crossings via Djibouti will stay excessive within the coming months.
