Substitute while the actions of the article are loading
A makeshift boat overloaded with migrants capsized near Puerto Rico on Thursday, officials said, leaving at least 13 dead and dozens more rescued.
“We hope to find more survivors,” said Ricardo Castrodad, a spokesman for the United States The San Juan Coast Guard Sector said Thursday night as the rescue operation continued. “But it can go both ways.” He said it was unclear how many people were on the boat, which he described as “overcrowded”. The crews did not see life jackets, he added.
The Coast Guard said it had heard shortly before noon that the crew of a Customs and Border Protection plane had spotted the boat and people in the water, about 10 nautical miles north of Desecheo Island.
The ship is “suspected of taking part in an illegal voyage,” the Coast Guard said in a press release. Jeffrey Quinonez, regional spokesman for customs and border protection, said the boat left the Dominican Republic, but added that only two survivors of the Caribbean nation. Among those rescued were eight Haitians who were transported to a hospital in Aguadilla, a city in northwestern Puerto Rico, he said.
Thirty-one survivors – 11 women and 20 men – were taken to Crash Boat Beach in Aguadilla, Quinones said.
Betsy Rivera, a spokeswoman for the Puerto Rican Institute of Forensic Science, said the agency had received 13 bodies as a result of the marine casualty. They still have no identity or nationality for the deceased. The autopsy will take place on Friday, and they hope to remove DNA to identify the dead.
The institute liaises with the Dominican Commission on Human Rights, an organization commonly linked to such incidents to help identify family members on a neighboring island.
An increasing number of migrants have made such insidious voyages by sea, fleeing countries where the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated long-standing problems of poverty and violence.
According to the US Coast Guard, 1,527 Haitians, 742 Dominicans and 838 Cubans on “illegal travel” were captured in Florida and the Caribbean in the year ending September 30, 2021.
In Puerto Rico and the Mona Pass, which separates it from the Dominican Republic, 53 trips were seized by the Coast Guard and its partner agencies between October 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022. About 1,308 migrants – including 940 Dominicans and 298 Haitians – were detained. announced the Coast Guard.
Castrodad said the type of vessel that capsized on Thursday was known as “yola” – a boat with “poor construction, always absorbing water, unfit for navigation and designed to try to transfer these people with one try”.
Boats can be difficult to detect, he said, so fortunately customs and border protection crews noticed the emergency.
Add Comment