Djibouti’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh, says about 1,400 refugees have arrived in the country from Yemen within a 24-hour period.
Dawaleh disclosed this in a post on X on Saturday.
“1,400 refugees arrived in Djibouti from Yemen in just 24 hours,” he stated.
In a separate post on Friday, the minister said 500 refugees had arrived in the coastal city of Obock, including women and children, after they were rescued at sea when their boats ran out of fuel while crossing the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.
Obock, a city only about 20 kilometres across the water from the Yemeni coast, has for several years been a preferred arrival point for people seeking refuge from war-torn Yemen.
The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait is also used in the opposite direction by migrants from the Horn of Africa, who transit through Yemen on their way to Gulf countries.
The Humanitarian Response Coordinator for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Safiya Ibrahim, said vulnerable groups, including women and children, had reached the shores of Obock, with more expected in the coming days.
The IOM said on Saturday that 76,000 people had been displaced by fighting in Yemen since July, with the figure quadrupling following a renewed escalation in hostilities.
Djibouti hosts tens of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers. United Nations Refugee Agency figures from March 2026 showed a registered population of more than 36,000, with the majority from Somalia, Ethiopia and Yemen.
Aljazeera
