At least 40 people were rescued in open waters near Puerto Rico after a makeshift boat carrying an estimated 60 people capsized, the US Coast Guard said on Monday. Two people were found dead, and rescue efforts were still under way on Monday evening.
The boat overturned several miles from Mona Island, a small uninhabited island west of Puerto Rico. Survivors told authorities there were about 60 people on board, with many spending more than 12 hours in the water before they were spotted.
A passing boat near Mona Island saw the survivors around noon on Monday and alerted authorities, helping rescue four people at that time. The Coast Guard said the vessel capsized late on Sunday after a fight broke out in which people were severely injured with a machete. It said the group then jumped into the water without life jackets.
It was not immediately clear where the people were from. A US Coast Guard spokesperson said she did not have that information. Migrants fleeing poverty and violence have long travelled from Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, to Puerto Rico and other islands through the dangerous Mona Passage. Many make the journey on makeshift boats that sometimes capsize in rough waters.
Monday’s incident is the latest deadly voyage in the region. In June 2022, 11 Haitian girls and women were buried in Puerto Rico after the heavily overloaded boat they were travelling in capsized in waters northwest of the US territory. Last week, police in the Turks and Caicos Islands detained a makeshift boat carrying 60 Haitian migrants, while in June another 240 migrants from Haiti were detained near the archipelago.
Gang violence has displaced a record 1.5 million people across Haiti, where more than 3,050 people were reported killed from January to June, according to UN statistics. Armed men control an estimated 70 per cent of Port-au-Prince and large parts of Haiti’s central region and beyond. The rescue near Puerto Rico once again underlined the dangers faced by migrants attempting the sea crossing.
With PTI Inputs
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