113 saved, 85 missing as boat capsizes

Up to 85 people are missing after a boat carrying Haitian migrants capsized and sank off the Turks and Caicos Islands, the US Coast Guard said today.

One survivor said the boat struck a reef as it tried to elude police.

Rescuers found 113 survivors stranded on two reefs and recovered two bodies, said Lieutenant Commander Matt Moorlag, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami, revising an earlier statement that four bodies had been found.

“Our main goal right now is just to get everybody out of the water and get medical attention for those who need it,” said Petty Officer Third Class Sabrina Elgammal, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

The accident happened at around 2pm yesterday. By late evening, Turks and Caicos authorities using small boats had rescued about 40 people stranded on a reef two miles (3km) south-east of West Caicos island. Many others were later found on a nearby reef, Lt Cmdr Moorlag said.

The boat, carrying up to 200 Haitians, had been at sea for three days when passengers saw a police vessel and accidentally steered the boat on to a reef as they tried to hide, survivor Alces Julien said at a hospital where some survivors were receiving treatment.

Ms Elgammal said information from survivors indicated that between 160 and 200 people were on board when the vessel capsized near the island chain north of Haiti and south-east of the Bahamas.

She said the cause of the accident was under investigation.

A Coast Guard cutter searched through the night for survivors, and Lt Cmdr Moorlag said a helicopter and a jet would join the search at first light. He said a C-130 aircraft was also expected to help in the search.

Haitians routinely take to the seas in rickety, overcrowded boats in hopes of escaping poverty in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.

In May 2007, an overcrowded sloop carrying more than 160 migrants capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands. Some of the victims were eaten by sharks. The 78 people who survived accused a Turks and Caicos patrol boat of ramming their vessel as they approached shore and towing them into deeper water.

In May, a boat carrying at about 30 mainly Haitian migrants capsized off Florida’s coast, killing at least nine people, including a pregnant woman.