21 dead, including children, 23 missing after asylum-seeker boat overturns off Djibouti: UN

Twenty-one migrants drowned and another 23 are missing after a boat carrying 77 people capsized off the coast of Djibouti, the second such incident in two weeks, Reuters reported Tuesday citing the United Nations migration agency.

The accident occurred on Monday night, and, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the boat’s occupants included children.

Tens of thousands of migrants from the Horn of Africa, especially from Ethiopia and Somalia, leave the continent through Djibouti on the perilous so-called “eastern migration route”, aiming to reach Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations to find work.