A small motorboat carrying 38 migrants capsized on Monday off France's Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, killing at least 17 people -- eight of them children, officials said.
The boat, carrying migrants from the Comoros Islands about 200km to the northwest, overturned while trying to evade the French coast guard, the Ministry of Immigration said in a statement.
Four people on the boat survived. Police backed by aircraft searched for the 17 others who were thrown overboard and were not accounted for. Some of the 17 may have reached safety, officials said.
"It appears that about 10 people were able to reach the shore by their own means," Lieutenant Colonel Patrice Martinez, of the police force in Mayotte, said by telephone.
A Paris-based official with France's national gendarmerie said on Monday eight children were among the dead.
Survivors said the boat, known locally as a kwassa-kwassa and typically about 7m or 8m long, had left on Sunday from Comoros. The shipwreck occurred near the shore in choppy seas, Martinez said.
Such boats, often heavily laden, regularly tip over. One such boat capsized July 22 also east of Mayotte, killing one person -- though 26 people were unaccounted for.
Comoros, between the northern tip of Madagascar and Africa, has faced a series of coups and political turmoil since it gained independence from France in 1975. It is one of the world's poorest countries, with a young and rapidly growing population of about 770,000.
France last year expelled more than 16,000 illegal immigrants from Comoros who had reached Mayotte, the ministry said.
"This new drama tragically illustrates the risks that [human] traffickers run by exploiting the miseries of these migrants," said the statement, vowing to fight such "criminal networks."
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition