Sunday, January 31, 2010
PROVIDENCIALES: Scores of Haitians have been picked up in a boat off the Turks and Caicos Islands, the first group known to have fled since the devastating January 12 earthquake, police said Saturday.
A rickety boat crammed with 126 people, including children as young as eight, was intercepted early Wednesday five miles from the island of Providenciales, Marine police chief Neil Hall said.
"The amount of people on board is indicative of the problem we may now face," Hall said, adding that he feared it would be the first in a wave of many to set sail in coming weeks.
"People are desperate -- they will be trying to get away," he said.
Assistant police commissioner Dave Ryder said some of the boat passengers had been taken to the country's sole detention center, which can accommodate around 25 people, and the rest were being held in a nearby sports complex.
Local doctors and Red Cross volunteers treated many of the survivors for severe dehydration, officials said.
The British-dependent island chain around 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Haiti stepped up patrols to defend the country's sea borders earlier this week following the powerful earthquake in Haiti.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake killed around 170,000 people and left more than one million homeless.
Migrants from impoverished Haiti often undertake perilous journeys aboard precarious and often overcrowded boats headed for the Caribbean or the United States.
In July around 70 Haitians were feared drowned after their boat capsized off the islands.
PROVIDENCIALES: Scores of Haitians have been picked up in a boat off the Turks and Caicos Islands, the first group known to have fled since the devastating January 12 earthquake, police said Saturday.
A rickety boat crammed with 126 people, including children as young as eight, was intercepted early Wednesday five miles from the island of Providenciales, Marine police chief Neil Hall said.
"The amount of people on board is indicative of the problem we may now face," Hall said, adding that he feared it would be the first in a wave of many to set sail in coming weeks.
"People are desperate -- they will be trying to get away," he said.
Assistant police commissioner Dave Ryder said some of the boat passengers had been taken to the country's sole detention center, which can accommodate around 25 people, and the rest were being held in a nearby sports complex.
Local doctors and Red Cross volunteers treated many of the survivors for severe dehydration, officials said.
The British-dependent island chain around 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Haiti stepped up patrols to defend the country's sea borders earlier this week following the powerful earthquake in Haiti.
The 7.0 magnitude earthquake killed around 170,000 people and left more than one million homeless.
Migrants from impoverished Haiti often undertake perilous journeys aboard precarious and often overcrowded boats headed for the Caribbean or the United States.
In July around 70 Haitians were feared drowned after their boat capsized off the islands.
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