14 dead in migrant shipwreck between Venezuela and Trinidad
Trinidad and Tobago bound shipwrecked en route and left sofar 14 migrants dead The Venezuelan federal government said Sunday.
The federal government said in a statement that 11 bodies were found by a Coast Guard patrol on Saturday afternoon, and “today, following through to the events that occurred, we found 3 dead, 2 males and 1 female on the beach.”
The Trinidadian Coast Guard had said Saturday that Venezuelan authorities informed them that “11 bodies have been recovered that day in waters near the Venezuelan coastal town of Guiria,” in the northeastern state of Sucre.
Preliminary information suggested that the boat kept on December 6 with an increase of than 20 people up to speed.
Venezuelan opposition deputy Robert Alcala, who represents sure express, said that migrant departures to Trinidad often employed precarious boats loaded with an excessive amount of weight.
The deputy said the boat was “allegedly detained in Trinidad and was returned to Venezuela,” within the island nation’s response to the arrival of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s economic crisis.
Citing a police article, he explained that the bodies were tied together supposedly to safeguard themselves from weighty waves and were within an advanced state of decomposition.
The Trinidadian Coast Guard, however, said that it had not intercepted any boats from Guiria.
Venezuela has been crippled by a good political and economic crisis triggering runaway inflation, long queues for petrol, shortages of water and gas, and electric power cuts.
The UN estimates that a lot more than five million Venezuelans have left their country since 2015 as a result of the crisis, some 25,000 of whom fled to Trinidad and Tobago.
About 100 persons have disappeared during the dangerous journey from Guiria to Trinidad between 2018 and 2019 alone.
The island nation, with a population of just one 1.3 million, says ithas facilitated the registration of 16,000 Venezuelans.
