The boat is believed to have taken a heavily used migrant route to dock in the United States
A search was launched on Tuesday to find 39 people missing after their boat capsized on Saturday, suspected of carrying migrants off the coast of Florida, the US Coast Guard said.
The boat, which left the Bimini Islands in the Bahamas, capsized about 70 km east of the park in Fort Pierce Inlet, Florida, due to bad weather, the Coast Guard said on Twitter, which suspects an operation ” of human trafficking”.
The alert was given around 8:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday 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 participated 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 who seek to reach the United States, and as a starting point for a dangerous crossing by Haitians living in the archipelago.