KINGSTOWN (Reuters) -Police in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Tuesday said they found a boat beached on the shore of Canouan island carrying the remains of what they believed to be 11 people who may be from Mali, though investigations into their identities are ongoing.
“Several passports were recovered at the scene which appear to be from the Republic of Mali,” Superintendent Junior Simmons said in a video message. “The remains were in an advanced state of decomposition, and some were not fully intact.”
Local police received on Monday morning around 10:45 a.m. (1445 GMT) a report about the 45-foot vessel that washed ashore in Little Bay on Canouan, to the south of the archipelago Caribbean nation.
Simmons said the remains had been transported to mainland St. Vincent pending further forensic and investigative procedures.
In nearby St. Kitts and Nevis, authorities in January said they had discovered a vessel where they found the bodies of 19 people who they estimated had been at sea for a long period due to the advanced stage of decomposition.
They also found identifications suggesting some of those passengers also came from Mali, a landlocked West African nation some 6,200 km (3,850 miles) east across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean off the West African coast is among the world’s most dangerous maritime routes, with strong westerly currents and winds capable of driving vessels far off course.
(Reporting by Robertson Henry in Kingstown; Writing by Sarah Morland; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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