ADDIS ABABA - At least 558 East African migrants have died along the dangerous eastern migration route in 2024 as they attempted to cross the Red Sea, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The United Nations migration agency, in its latest report released late Thursday, said the majority of the casualties were caused due to drowning, as some 462 migrants succumbed due to shipwrecks.

It said the past year saw six major shipwrecks as a result of "unseaworthy boats, overfilling of vessels, traveling in poor maritime conditions, and smugglers forcing people to disembark at sea."

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Data from IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix show that in 2024, despite the life-threatening risks involved in the dangerous route, about 446,194 movements were documented from the Horn of Africa to countries in the Arabian Peninsula, marking a 13 percent increase from the previous year.

It said the increase was observed despite the heightened presence of Djibouti and Yemen coast guards in the Gulf of Aden during the year, as well as military operations and forced returns, which disrupted flows along the route.

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The report said that the main reasons for migration continued to be largely economic reasons, followed by conflict, violence and persecution. It said women and girls represented almost one-third of movements during the past year.

According to the UN migration agency, the eastern migration route is "one of the busiest and riskiest routes in the world" travelled by hundreds of thousands of migrants, often relying on smugglers to facilitate movement.