One dead as boat with 18 migrants goes down off Colombia

Migrants are transported by boat from Bajo Chiquito, the first border checkpoint in Panama’s Darien province, to the Migrants Reception Station in Lajas Blancas on September 21, 2023. The clandestine journey through the Darien Gap usually lasts five or six days, at the mercy of all kinds of bad weather. More than 390,000 migrants have entered Panama through this jungle so far this year, far more than in all of 2022, when there were 248,000, according to official Panamanian data. (Photo by Luis ACOSTA / AFP)

At least one person died when a boat carrying 18 undocumented migrants sank off Colombia’s Caribbean coast on Tuesday, the country’s migration office said.

Fifteen people were rescued, six of whom were children, the agency announced on X.

No details were available regarding the other two people on board.

The incident occurred near the islands of San Andres and Providencia, close to Colombia’s border with Nicaragua.

Military officials said a search and rescue operation was underway by navy rapid reaction units along with the air force.

In May, Washington imposed sanctions on Nicaragua, accusing it of aiding the trafficking of undocumented migrants seeking to make it to the United States.

Colombia has said that migrants are increasingly using a clandestine route between San Andres and Nicaragua to avoid the dangerous crossing through the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama, heading north through Central America and eventually to Mexico and the US border.