The authorities of the Oriental Caribbean Nation of Saint-Kitts and Nevis declared Thursday that they were investigating the circumstances which had led to the discovery of at least 19 bodies found at sea.
On Wednesday, around 11:30 am, local time, the coastal guard of St. Kitts and Nevis responded to a report of a drift ship off the Côte de Nevis. The partially submerged boat contained decomposed human remains. He was towed to Saint-Kitts, where police and medical officials conduct investigations.
“It was a fishing vessel, which is generally not in the Caribbean,” police commissioner James Sutton told the Associated Press. “We are not sure, but we believe that this ship is from the West African coast.”
Sutton said that officials are now facing the difficult task of determining the exact number of bodies and identifying them. The advanced state of decomposition, he said, has made the task difficult.
This is the first discovery of this type of recent memory in the twin nation of the island.
In August, the medical-legal authorities of Dominican Republic worked to identify the remains of at least 14 mainly decomposed bodies found on a ship abandoned 10 naval miles from its north coast. The Dominican Republic Navy said the 14 skeletons seemed to belong to individuals in Senegal and Mauritania, according to the documentation found next to the bodies.
In 2007, three bodies of people believed came North Korea were recovered in the North JapanTwo days after the authorities found a dilapidated empty boat, Coast Guard officials said. The Coast Guard said that a Japanese fishing boat had picked up a male body floating off the coast of Sakata in the prefecture of Yamagata and two other bodies stranded on a neighboring beach one hour and half later. The bodies were broken down, but one had a reverse pin considered to be North Korean.