Bogota – Colombia — A small boat filled with decomposing corpses was spotted by fishermen off the northeast coast of Brazil on Saturday, according to local media. Brazil’s attorney general’s office said in a statement that it had sent a forensic team to the scene to determine where the bodies and the boat came from.
“Some information indicates that there could be up to 20 bodies” in the boat, the attorney general’s office said in a statement. The office announced it was opening a criminal and civil investigation into the incident.
The boat was floating off the coast of Para state, in a remote location about 185 miles from the state capital, Belem.
This was not the first time that ships carrying corpses had been spotted by fishermen on the west coast of the Atlantic Ocean. In 2021, at least seven boats full of bodies have washed up in Brazil and the Eastern Caribbean.
Emilio Morenatti/AP
Investigations by the Associated Press and local authorities determined that some of these boats were carrying the bodies of African migrants who were trying to reach the Canary Islands, but had missed their target and drifted for weeks in the Atlantic Ocean.
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