The boat, part of the Bahamas, carried migrants according to a survivor. Coastguards suspect a “trafficking of human beings”.
Le Monde with Reuters
Research was launched on Tuesday, January 25, to find thirty-nine people missing after the capsizing off Florida on Saturday of their boat suspected of transporting migrants, announced the American coastguards.
The boat, party of the Bimini Islands, the Bahamas, capsized about 70 km east of Fort Pierce Inlet Park due to bad weather, stated the coastguards on Twitter who suspect an operation “of Trafficking of human beings “.
Dangerous crossing
The alert was given on Tuesday around 8 hours (14 hours in Paris) by a sailor who recovered one of the passengers who had managed to cling to the boat. According to this survivor, the boat carried thirty-nine other people and none of the passengers wore a lifejacket.
Several ships and planes participate in the searches between the Bimini, a small archipelago located east of Miami, and Fort Pierce, further north.
The Bahamas, an archipelago of 700 islands (including thirty-nine inhabited) located 80 km southeast of the Côtes de la Florida, close to Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, are regularly used as a land. transit by migrants who seek to reach the United States, and as a starting point for a dangerous crossed by Haitians living in the archipelago.