39119: Hermanitn(News)Eight Haitian migrants were found dead and 44 were missing in a s (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on  Fri, Mar. 02, 2007
reprint or license print email

HAITI
At least 8 dead in shipwreck
Eight Haitian migrants were found dead and 44 were missing in a shipwreck near 
the Dominican Republic that left two survivors.

BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com

A passing ship and a pleasure boat found eight dead Haitians and two survivors 
of a shipwreck near the Dominican Republic, and 44 more people are missing and 
presumed dead, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.

After two days of searching, ships and aircraft from several nations have 
failed to find the remnants of a ship that carried Haitian migrants before it 
burned and sank earlier this week.

Two badly burned and dehydrated Haitians were found Wednesday morning drifting 
in the waters 23 miles north of the Dominican Republic, said Petty Officer 
Barry Bena. The vessel that found them -- a Worldwind motor yacht piloted by 
Americans -- took the survivors to Montecristi, a town in northwest Dominican 
Republic.

Gersan Lisien, 27, and Mali Siluei, 23, are in stable condition at Padre 
Fantini Hospital in Montecristi. They both have first-degree burns but may be 
released today.

''They said the boat just came apart and then caught fire, and the others did 
not know how to swim,'' Dr. María Belliard, who spoke to the survivors through 
a translator, said by phone from Montecristi.

She said the accident occurred Sunday and the survivors were adrift for two 
days before they were rescued. They had waved and screamed for other boats to 
stop, but the vessels kept going, the survivors said.

''They told me that the other boats had to have heard them calling for help, 
but they did not dare get close,'' she said.

They were eventually found by Americans they had seen pass by the night before.

The crew of the Liberian-flagged merchant ship Kemeri found eight bodies, Bena 
said. The ship assisted in the rescue for an entire day before it left the 
area.

The survivors said they left Cap-Haitien, on the northern coast of Haiti, on 
Sunday on a motorized home made vessel en route to the Turks and Caicos 
Islands, the Coast Guard said.

Dominican newspaper Hoy said the migrants left from Fort Liberté, just east of 
Cap-Haitien.

Their boat sank when gas tanks aboard exploded, Ramón Aristides Madera Arias, 
Environment and Natural Resources prosecutor, told the newspaper. Madera said 
the Environment Ministry and fishermen from Panama were also involved in the 
rescue.

The Dominican navy said it sent a plane to fly search missions over the area, 
while the Coast Guard has its Cutter Valient and three aircraft normally 
deployed to the Bahamas searching a 625-square-mile area.

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