At Least 40 Migrants Killed in Boat Fire off Haitian Coast, U.N. Says

At least 40 migrants were killed when a boat they were traveling on from Haiti caught fire, a United Nations agency announced on Friday. The boat, which was carrying over 80 people, left the northern coast of Haiti on Wednesday en route for Turks and Caicos, the agency said.

Another 41 migrants were rescued by the Haitian Coast Guard off the coast of Cap-Haïtien, a city in northern Haiti, the agency said, with 11 taken to a hospital.

The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

The episode was another disaster for the Caribbean country, whichhas been upended by rampant gang violence and an unfolding humanitarian crisis. Earlier this year, coordinated gang attacks rocked the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, forcing the closure of its airport for nearly three months. Since then, nearly 580,000 Haitians have been displaced, according to the U.N.

“This devastating event highlights the risks faced by children, women, and men migrating through irregular routes, demonstrating the crucial need for safe and legal pathways for migration,” Grégoire Goodstein, the head of the U.N’s International Organization for Migration in Haiti, said in a statement on Friday.

He said that Haiti’s socioeconomic situation was dire and that the “extreme violence” over the past months has pushed Haitians to resort to “desperate measures even more.”

The first wave of foreign law enforcement officers from Kenya arrived in Haiti late last month to try to wrest control of Port-au-Prince from dozens of armed groups that have attacked police stations, freed prisoners and killed with impunity.

Haiti has been without a president since the assassination in July 2021 of Jovenel Moïse by armed men who broke into his bedroom and gunned him down in front of his wife. His murder is still under separate investigations in Haiti and Florida.

Amid the surge in violence, Ariel Henry resigned as prime minister in late April. In late May, Garry Conille, a former U.N. official, was appointed prime minister by a presidential transitional council. The Kenyans in Haiti are the first to deploy of an expected 2,500-member multinational force, an effort largely organized by the Biden administration in the United States.