Death Toll At 52 After Migrant Boats Sink Off Djibouti

The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies

Obock, Djibouti, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Jan, 2019 ) :The death toll from the sinking of two boats carrying migrants to Yemen from Djibouti rose to 52 on Thursday, the UN migration agency said, appealing to regional leaders to take action to stop such tragedies.

Rescuers working in Djibouti's northeastern Obock region continued to recover bodies on the Horn of Africa nation's coast following the capsizing of the two boats earlier this week.

The sinking of the vessels, which survivors say were mostly carrying Ethiopians, is the latest tragedy to occur on the risky route used by African migrants seeking work in the middle East.

"No human being deserves such plight. It is up to actors and leaders working across the region to prevent such tragedies which take innocent lives," Lalini Veerassamy, chief of mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told AFP.

The figure of 52 is up from a previous toll of 43 on Wednesday.

Veerassamy also revised downwards the number of survivors to 15 from 16, citing an error in IOM's tally.

The number of migrants affected remains unclear but IOM believes one of the two boats carried 130 people.