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Rescuers race to find over 100 migrants missing off Djibouti coast; search for shipwrecked migrants near Canaries called off

Narobi, kenya/Madrid, Spain
Reuters

Rescuers are searching for more than 100 migrants off the coast of Djibouti after smugglers forced them to jump into the sea, the UN migration agency said on Wednesday.

At least 45 bodies have been recovered from Tuesday’s incident, a death toll that makes 2024 the deadliest year on record for sea crossings on the migration route between East Africa and Yemen, the International Organization for Migration said.


A view of an anchored boat after bodies of suspected migrants who died after their boat capsized were retrieved off the coast of Djibouti on 2nd October, 2024. PICTURE: Mohamed Ibrahim/International Organization for Migration/Handout via Reuters.

Another 154 people have been rescued from the two boats, which left Yemen for Djibouti with a total of 310 passengers, IOM said in a statement.

“Ongoing search and rescue operations are underway by the Djiboutian Coast Guard to locate the missing migrants,” it said.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people leave the Horn of Africa in pursuit of better economic prospects in Gulf nations via the so-called Eastern Route, described by the IOM as one of the world’s busiest and riskiest migration corridors.



Survivors told IOM that they were forced off the two vessels by the boat operators in the open sea off the coast of Obock, a port town in Djibouti.

The survivors included a four-month-old infant whose mother drowned, the agency said.

Many migrants on the Eastern Route end up trapped in violence-wracked Yemen and attempt to return to Djibouti.

Meanwhile, Spanish authorities have called off the search for dozens of passengers on a migrant boat that sank near the island of El Hierro in the Canary Islands over the weekend, killing at least nine people, the maritime rescue service said on Wednesday.


Flowers are seen during burial of a migrant in the El Mocanal cemetery, after the sinking of a migrant boat that killed at least nine people and left at least 48 missing, on the island of El Hierro, Spain, on 30th September, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Borja Suarez/File photo

The boat sank in the early hours of Saturday. While 27 people were rescued, at least 48 passengers are missing and hopes of retrieving their remains from sea have waned.

If the missing are confirmed dead, it would make this the deadliest such incident in 30 years of crossings from Africa to the Canary Islands. The deadliest recorded to date occurred in 2009 off the island of Lanzarote, when 25 people died.

A spokesperson for the rescue service said the extensive search operation had been suspended due to a lack of results.

The calm seas and light winds associated with late summer in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa have prompted a renewed surge of migrants, local authorities said last month.

Some 30,808 migrants arrived in the Canaries by sea in the first nine months of 2024, according to interior ministry data, more than twice as many as in the same period last year.

– Additional reporting by EMMA PINEDO

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