At least 139 migrants, including 15 children, have died and at least 84 remain missing after an overcrowded boat capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said. The vessel was carrying about 305 people from Djibouti, a small country on the Horn of Africa, towards Yemen across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It went down near the port town of Obock on Thursday night or early Friday. Around 82 people survived, all of them Ethiopian nationals, and the agency warned the toll could still rise.

The figure has already been revised upward: the IOM had reported 109 dead on Sunday before 30 more bodies were recovered. Alexandre Coissac, the IOM's chief of mission in Djibouti, said the migrants boarded in the evening of 8 October and the boat sank soon afterwards, close to shore, "mainly because it was overcrowded." Survivors told him it began to sink backwards almost as soon as people were aboard. Coissac said the count includes only those buried by Djiboutian authorities; bodies buried by the migrants themselves will be added once verified. "They were buried with no names, in a common grave, like in a war situation," he said, adding that local authorities had done their best but were overwhelmed as bodies washed ashore.

Survivors are being treated at an IOM centre in Obock for swallowed seawater and shock, and are receiving psychological support. Some have learned that relatives died; others have been given phones to tell families at home they are alive. Coissac said one survivor came from Tigray, a region of northern Ethiopia where fighting between rebels and the federal government has recently flared again. Video shared by the IOM showed shoes and other personal belongings scattered on a beach as search efforts continued.

The disaster is one of the deadliest on the so-called Eastern Route, along which tens of thousands of people from the Horn of Africa travel each year, hoping to reach Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia for work or safety. The IOM's Missing Migrants Project recorded more than 900 deaths or disappearances on the route last year. Migrants keep crossing despite Yemen's civil war, now in its second decade, where fighting between the Saudi-backed, internationally recognised government and Iranian-backed Houthi rebels has recently escalated. At least 2,000 Yemenis have received aid in Djibouti in recent weeks, moving in the opposite direction. The IOM says its tracking has recorded more than 20,000 movements from Ethiopia to Djibouti since 10 September.

The IOM says poverty, insecurity and the growing effects of climate change keep people on the move. "No one gets into a boat like that unless they believe there is no other safe way," said IOM Director-General Amy Pope, who called on governments and donors to expand safe and legal pathways "before the next boat goes down."