Authorities in the eastern Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis said Thursday they are investigating the circumstances that led to the discovery of at least 19 bodies found drifting at sea.
At around 11:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday the St. Kitts and Nevis Coast Guard responded to a report of a drifting vessel off the coast of Nevis. The partially submerged boat contained decomposed human remains. It was towed to St. Kitts, where police and medical officials are conducting investigations.
“It was a fishing vessel, which is not typically found in the Caribbean,” Police Commissioner James Sutton told The Associated Press. “We are not certain, but we believe that this vessel originated off the West African coast.”
Sutton said officials now face the difficult task of determining the exact number of bodies and identifying them. The advanced state of decomposition, he said, has made it difficult.
This is the first such discovery in recent memory in the twin-island nation.
In August, forensic authorities in the Dominican Republic worked to identify the remains of at least 14 mostly decomposed bodies found on an abandoned vessel 10 nautical miles of its northern coast. The Dominican Republic Navy said the 14 skeletons appeared to belong to individuals from Senegal and Mauritania, according to the documentation found next to the bodies.
In 2007, three bodies of people believed to be from North Korea were recovered in northern Japan, two days after authorities found a dilapidated empty boat, coast guard officials said. The coast guard said a Japanese fishing boat picked up a male body floating off the coast of Sakata in Yamagata prefecture and two more bodies washed up on a nearby beach an hour and half later. The bodies were decomposed, but one had a lapel pin thought to be North Korean.
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