Djibouti shipwreck: Death toll rises to 139 as 84 remain missing

At least 139 migrants have died after their boat capsized off Djibouti, with a further 84 people still missing, the UN migration agency (IOM) said on Sunday.The toll rose from 109 after the bodies of 30 more people were recovered. Search and rescue efforts are continuing.The boat was carrying 305 people from Djibouti towards Yemen when it went down near Guehere, north of Obock, in the early hours of Friday. About 82 people survived.IOM described it as one of the deadliest shipwrecks recorded on the Eastern Route, which runs from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.On the move, despite risksThe shipwreck comes as Djibouti deals with continued traffic in both directions. Since 10 September, IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix has recorded more than 20,000 movements into the country from Ethiopia, as migrants keep heading for the Gulf despite the return to full-scale fighting in Yemen. Over roughly the same period, more than 3,700 refugees have arrived from Yemen, while 539 Ethiopian migrants have come back from there.Alexandre Coissac, IOM’s chief of mission in Djibouti, told journalists in Geneva on 6 October that the country was facing “overlapping emergencies”. “Djibouti is...