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At least 12 migrants drowned off the coast of Djibouti after smugglers threw them from a boat, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported.
The agency also reports that other migrants remain missing.
IOM said the recovered bodies had been washed ashore near Obock and were buried by its staff.
The victims were part of a group of about 50 Ethiopians, including women, on a boat returning from Yemen when the violence began. Some 34 migrants, who survived, are being treated for minor injuries and concussions, and the UN agency treats them at its migrant response center in Obock.
The incident follows another that occurred 12 days earlier in the same area, where smugglers killed migrants and several more were injured.
IOM’s Regional Director for the East and Horn of Africa, Mohammed Abdiker, condemned the killings and called for more efforts to protect migrants trying to reach the country.
“To say that more needs to be done to respond to migrants who try to reach the country, make these dangerous journeys and be exploited by traffickers, who clearly do not take human life into account, is an understatement,” he said.
(Cover image: VCG)
