A SEARCH is ongoing for five Cubans who are presumed missing after 19 others were picked up, including a deceased male, during a joint law enforcement operation in the southern Bahamas last week.
According to the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the 19 Cubans were picked up during a joint effort with Operation Turks and Caicos (OPBAT) and the United States Coast Guard.
On Wednesday, March 3, six individuals were captured after being spotted on Anguilla Cay and taken aboard a US Coast Guard cutter. While in the area, the USCG vessel also saw 18 Cubans on Cay Sal.
HMBS Durward Knowles, under the command of Senior Lieutenant Jataro McDonald, was dispatched to investigate.
After arriving in the area, the RBDF conducted an extensive search of the surrounding cays, waters and inlet for additional individuals. The RBDF patrol craft met with the USCG vessel on Thursday shortly after 2pm, to receive the six individuals.
Shortly after 4pm Thursday, HMBS Durward Knowles spotted a capsized vessel in waters approximately three nautical miles south of Cay Sal, and retrieved 13 Cuban nationals, including a deceased male.
The RBDF and USCG are still in the area conducting searches for the presumed missing individuals.
Yesterday, Princess Margaret Hospital said it received three of the Cuban migrants rescued from the capsized vessel, two of whom are patients and the other is deceased.
The women migrants were admitted to hospital for management of chemical burns, PMH said.
The “initial triage, resuscitation and stabilisation” of the migrants was carried out by the RBDF medical department at HMBS Coral Harbour.
Comments
tribanon 3 years, 1 month ago
The Bahamas has become a dumping ground for Haitian and Cuban migrants intercepted by the US Coast Guard with the very deliberate objective of making sure these apprehended migrants do not get into US. Our small nation gets saddled with the significant costs of detaining and holding these migrants not to mention the COVID-19 risks they present to us.
And of course Communist China always seizes these types of opportunities to remind the Bahamian people that the US only ever serves its own interests and is no real friend of the Bahamas. The US is going to rue the day the sinister and evil Communist Chinese Party gains absolute power and control over most small nations in the Caribbean region, especially the Bahamas given our very close proximity to the US.
realitycheck242 3 years, 1 month ago
There was a time in the eighties and nineties when the RBDF had a permanent outpost on Cay Sal because the Cuban government planted a flag on Cay Sal and Castro threatened to lay claim to all the cays in that area. The Late ASP Lawrence Major and an armed contingent detachment of marine police was rushed to removed the flag and the Cubans, Thankfully this happened with out a single shot being fired.Well the Pindling government would not allow this so a permanent base was created. and manned by Marine police and with the creation of the RBDF, her personnel took over. Those assigned rotated their stays monthly. Being a resource rich area along with Anguilla cay, Cay Sal should be manned again because frequency of incidents in that area.
bogart 3 years, 1 month ago
Send the full cost of the expenses which the extremely financially burdened Bahamian taxpayers have to incur involving the foreign nations citizens at our southern borders illegally breaching our sovereign territory in this case to the evil Communist Govt.
Bahamian Govt. must immediately summons the Cuban Ambassador and demand full explanation of this illegal incursions and blatent breachings of our Bahamian borders! !!!!!!
Bahamian taxpayers are tired, tired, tired, fed up and dead vexed of all these continuous illegal breachings of our Sovereign nation borders, surrounded by southern nations with populations of some 12 million population in each of them,.... and having to pay all expenses incurred by their citizens breaching our borders to apprehend and send them back!!!!!
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