A search was launched on Tuesday, January 25, to find 39 people missing off the coast of Florida on Saturday after a boat suspected of carrying migrants capsized, the US Coast Guard announced.
The boat, which left the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas, capsized about 70 km east of Fort Pierce Inlet Park due to bad weather, the Coast Guard said on Twitter, which suspects an operation “human trafficking”.
Dangerous crossing
The alert was given Tuesday around 8 a.m. local time (2 p.m. in Paris) by a sailor who picked up one of the passengers, who had managed to cling to the boat. According to this survivor, the boat was carrying 39 other people, and none of the passengers were wearing life jackets.
Several ships and planes are taking part in the search between the Bimini, a small archipelago located east of Miami, and Fort Pierce, further north.
The Bahamas, an archipelago of 700 islets (including 39 inhabited) located 80 km southeast of the coast of Florida, close to Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, are regularly used as a land of transit by migrants seeking to reach the United States, and as a starting point for a dangerous crossing by Haitians living in the archipelago.
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