A boat loaded with suspected migrants on Thursday capsized north of an uninhabited island near Puerto Rico, and 11 people had been confirmed dead while 31 others were rescued, authorities said.
It was not immediately clear how many people were aboard the boat when it turned over, US Coast Guard spokesman Ricardo Castrodad said, adding that a “mass rescue effort” was still underway.
“We’re looking to rescue as many people as we can and find as many survivors as we can,” he said.
Photo: AFP / Handout / US Coast Guard
At least eight Haitians were taken to the hospital, although the nationalities of all those aboard the boat were not immediately known.
The incident was the latest in a string of capsizings across the region, as migrants from Haiti and the Dominican Republic flee violence and poverty in their countries.
A US Customs and Border Protection helicopter spotted the overturned boat late on Thursday morning.
“If not for that, we would not have known about this until someone would have found any sign or received reports from people that their loved ones are missing,” Castrodad said. “They found them early enough that we were able to coordinate a response.”
The boat was spotted more than 18km north of the uninhabited Desecheo Island, which is off Puerto Rico’s west coast.
The US Coast Guard said that those rescued were 20 men and 11 women.
The capsizing came less than a week after the US Coast Guard and Dominican navy on Saturday rescued 68 migrants in the Mona Passage, a treacherous area between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
One woman believed to be from Haiti died, Castrodad said.
“These voyages are dangerous,” Castrodad said. “They’re unsafe, they are grossly overloaded ... [and have] no lifesaving equipment. It wouldn’t really take much for any of these vessels to capsize.”
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate