Djibouti registers 3,807 Yemeni arrivals by sea as Red Sea fighting spreads

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OBOCK, Djibouti — Djibouti’s national refugee office has registered 3,807 Yemeni arrivals by sea since fighting spread along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, its coordinator said.

The count was current to October 8, according to Mahdi Osman, coordinator at the Office for Assistance to Refugees and Disaster Victims.

Osman’s office, known by its French acronym ONARS, runs the Markazi site together with UNHCR.

Osman said the arrivals had added to pressure on shelter, water, sanitation, food and health care in Djibouti’s north-east.

Most land at Obock. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, lists three further landing points on the Djiboutian coast: Khor Angar, Moulhoule and Godoria.

The route crosses the Bab al-Mandab strait, the channel that separates Yemen from the Horn of Africa.

UNHCR said more than 2,400 people made the crossing in four days in mid-September. Djiboutian state media later put the number above 3,000 over several days that month, Al Jazeera reported.

More than 60 percent of those arriving were women, children and older people, according to UNHCR.

Many are moved to the Markazi site near Obock, which has hosted Yemeni refugees since an earlier phase of the war. UNHCR said in September that it had room for about 5,000 more people.

The agency said at the time it was planning for more than 10,000 arrivals. It expected numbers to climb after mid-October, when sea conditions usually improve.

The crossings followed a Houthi advance along Yemen’s Red Sea coast in September. The group took control of the coastline, including the port city of Mocha, Al Jazeera reported.

Inside Yemen, UNHCR said fighting on the western coast had displaced more than 100,000 people by mid-September. It warned the figure could rise from more than 130,000 to more than 230,000.

The World Health Organization’s eastern Mediterranean office reported at least 250,000 people displaced since early August.

Those movements add to displacement that predates the current fighting. About 5.2 million Yemenis were already internally displaced, according to UNHCR.

A camp for internally displaced people has been set up near Aden.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its plan for 2026, published in March, that more than 22 million people in Yemen need humanitarian assistance.

The same plan recorded 18.3 million people as acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.

Taiz governorate has absorbed part of the displacement. Laila Al Amine, regional programmes director at Prosper Global, formerly Mercy Corps, said the organisation was helping displaced people there, where more than 100,000 had sought refuge.

Funding has lagged behind the movement of people. UNHCR’s Yemen operation was 18 percent funded for 2026, the agency said in September, when it asked for $25 million to reach about 231,000 people.

Its Djibouti operation was 15 percent funded. UNHCR appealed separately for $13.5 million to cover registration, reception and protection services for the new arrivals.

In mid-September the agency put the immediate needs of displaced families inside Yemen at about $14 million.

Babar Baloch, a UNHCR spokesperson, told reporters in Geneva on September 22 that intensifying fighting in Yemen could drive more mass displacement.

UNHCR has named Hodeidah, Taiz, Lahj, Aden, Abyan, Marib, Al Dhale and Shabwa among the governorates affected.

The fighting has widened since. Yemen’s government launched air strikes on Houthi positions on October 13, Al Jazeera reported.

On October 15, a missile and drone attack struck the Maashiq presidential palace in Aden. At least five people were killed, CNN and Al Jazeera reported. The government blamed the Houthis.

Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, called an October 10 attack on Riyadh’s international airport a grave escalation. Saudi authorities blamed the Houthis for that attack.

Grundberg has led UN mediation on Yemen since 2021.

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said he was deeply shocked by the Riyadh attack and said such strikes must cease.

Saudi authorities said at least 12 people were killed and about 300 wounded in that attack, the third on the airport that week.

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation said the dead included four Saudis, two Bangladeshis and one national each of the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt.

An attack on a military camp in Shabwa governorate killed at least 53 people on October 19, Al Jazeera reported.

Saudi-backed government forces attacked Houthi positions near the Red Sea trade route in early October, CNN reported.

Families pay boat operators to make the journey. One family that reached Obock said it had paid 100,000 Yemeni rials, about 320 pounds, for a nine-hour passage on a boat carrying roughly 80 people.

OCHA’s 2026 plan seeks $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people across Yemen.

Bab al-Mandab is one of the world’s main shipping chokepoints, linking the Red Sea and the Suez Canal route to the Gulf of Aden.

The strait is about 30 kilometres wide at its narrowest point.

UNHCR warned in September that a worsening conflict could push some vessels to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 25 to 30 days to shipping times.

Markazi lies near Obock on Djibouti’s north-eastern coast.

UNHCR and the Djiboutian government register the new arrivals at reception points along the coast.