Eight killed in migrant boat attack off Djibouti

ADDIS ABABA:

At least eight people died and 22 were missing after smugglers attacked a migrant boat and forced them to disembark, the UN's migration agency said on Wednesday.

The boat was carrying around 150 passengers when it was stopped by smugglers last Thursday, forcing them to disembark "far from the coast". "The passengers were left to swim for their lives in open water," the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement.

It was not clear why the smugglers forced the group to disembark. Each year, thousands of African migrants brave the "Eastern Route" across the Red Sea from Djibouti to Yemen in the hope of eventually reaching oil-rich Gulf countries.

Last year, the IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the route, with 462 resulting from shipwrecks.