At least 15 people drowned, two survived and nine went missing when a boat carrying Central American migrants capsized off Mexico's Pacific coast, the Mexican Navy said on Saturday.
"We have a total of two survivors rescued and 15 bodies recovered," the Navy said in a statement.
Earlier reports said 24 people had drowned when their boat capsized amid heavy seas churned by tropical storm Kiko, off the coast of southern Mexico.
Rescue operations by Navy ships and helicopters "continue in an effort to locate the nine people who so far have been reported missing," the Navy said.
Since the rescued were Salvadorans and the ship was on a route used by immigrant traffickers to the US, officials believe most of the dead -- eight women and three men -- and the missing were illegal immigrants from Central America, Oaxaca state authorities said in a separate statement.
None of the bodies have yet been identified, officials said.
A TV report said a Guatemalan woman survived from the vessel.
She said it set off from Guatemala on Tuesday with about 25 people on board from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras and was wrecked in a storm but she survived by clinging to a barrel.
Residents from a coastal village found the bodies on the beach and picked up others in the ocean with their fishing boats.
The wreck occurred early in the morning near the Tehuantepec Isthmus on Mexico's Pacific coast.
Some 20 migrants from Guatemala and El Salvador died in the same region in a similar accident a few years ago.
Tropical storm Kiko on Saturday was churning in a northwestern direction, packing 200kph winds, the US-based National Hurricane Center said.
The storm is expected to turn toward the Pacific Ocean in the next few days.
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
EXTRADITION FEARS: The legislative changes come five years after a treaty was suspended in response to the territory’s crackdown on democracy advocates Exiled Hong Kong dissidents said they fear UK government plans to restart some extraditions with the territory could put them in greater danger, adding that Hong Kong authorities would use any pretext to pursue them. An amendment to UK extradition laws was passed on Tuesday. It came more than five years after the UK and several other countries suspended extradition treaties with Hong Kong in response to a government crackdown on the democracy movement and its imposition of a National Security Law. The British Home Office said that the suspension of the treaty made all extraditions with Hong Kong impossible “even if
Former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, best known for making a statement apologizing over World War II, died yesterday aged 101, officials said. Murayama in 1995 expressed “deep remorse” over the country’s atrocities in Asia. The statement became a benchmark for Tokyo’s subsequent apologies over World War II. “Tomiichi Murayama, the father of Japanese politics, passed away today at 11:28am at a hospital in Oita City at the age of 101,” Social Democratic Party Chairwoman Mizuho Fukushima said. Party Secretary-General Hiroyuki Takano said he had been informed that the former prime minister died of old age. In the landmark statement in August 1995, Murayama said
RSS