- The couple’s two-year-old son was rescued and is in good health.
The Colombian Navy reported that they are maintaining the search and rescue alert following the shipwreck of a ship carrying migrants near the island of San Andrés. It was learned that a Venezuelan couple is missing.
Officials said they are working in conjunction with rescue teams from the Colombian Air Force and the Colombian Maritime Authority.
“We launched a search and rescue operation approximately one nautical mile from the island of San Andrés, following receiving an alert regarding a boat that had been shipwrecked with migrants,” the Colombian Navy’s Twitter account on July 10 said.
Colombian officials confirmed that so far, one person died in the shipwreck and 15 others were found alive. It was also learned that among the Six Venezuelans have been rescuedincluding the couple’s 2-year-old son; two Kazakhs; a Colombian; an Ecuadorian and a Nicaraguan.
The boat, which was traveling in the waters of the Colombian Caribbean, was carrying 20 migrants of different nationalities, including six minors.
Relatives of missing Venezuelans
Relatives of the missing Venezuelans identified them as Johniely Chiquinquirá León López, 25 years old, and Júnior Javier Celis, 32 years old.
The family of Leon Lopez confirmed in an interview with Final version that the migrants had been living in Santiago de Chile, Chile, for approximately five years.
According to information from those close to them, the couple decided to travel to the United States by sea to avoid crossing through the Darien jungle, between Colombia and Panama.
“We all hope that they will be found alive near the island, or on a nearby beach, and that they will return home. The whole family is waiting for them,” said one of their relatives, identified as Valery.
Valery said that the couple’s son was found alive and is in good health. It was learned that one of his grandparents traveled from Chile to Colombia to look for him.
“We decided to make a flyer “We are sending them to the island with their identification, photos and names, in case anyone has any information or if there is someone on the island of San Andrés who can help us find them. The uncertainty that we all have is devastating, it is heartbreaking,” Valery said.
Second shipwreck in San Andrés in less than a month
This is the second shipwreck recorded in San Andrés in less than a month. The Colombian Navy rescued 32 migrants, four of them minors, on June 14 who were sailing in two boats in the southwest of the Colombian island of San Andrés and were heading to Central America, authorities reported.
Upon detecting the vessels, the Coast Guard deployed a unit of motorboats with which they intercepted the boats and arrested the four crew members, from Nicaragua, for migrant smuggling.
Among the people on board the vessels were 16 Venezuelans, five Indians, four Colombians, two Haitians, one Cuban, one Ecuadorian, one Nepalese and one Jordanian. Four of them were minors and one had “mobility limitations,” the Navy said in a statement.
After verifying the health status of the rescued persons, they were placed at the disposal of the immigration authorities and the minors at the disposal of the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF).
Irregular migration by sea represents a high risk for the lives of those involved because it is carried out without taking into account the minimum safety conditions and is done behind the authorities’ backs, which makes search and rescue efforts difficult when emergencies arise,” the Navy warned.
So far in 2024, more than a hundred migrants have been rescued in the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia.
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2024-07-12 09:27:43