ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — In a sharp reversal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that he will hold a call with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days,” which will mark the first time the two have spoken since the war in Ukraine began and will be a meaningful step toward reopening high-level diplomatic channels between the two countries.
Blinken told reporters during a press briefing that a critical topic of discussion will be securing the freedom of WNBA superstar Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, both of whom are held in Russia.
The secretary revealed that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that and is hopeful for a breakthrough on their cases.
“[They] have been wrongly detained and must be allowed to come home,” Blinken said. “We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution.”
Blinken has not spoken to Lavrov — or indeed, any top Russia officials — since January, when they were locked in a flurry of talks as the U.S. tried to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The men were in the same room during the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia earlier this month but had no direct contact.
Blinken was asked at the time if there was a cost to pay for the Americans wrongfully detained in Russia by freezing out Lavrov.
“The problem is this: We see no signs whatsoever that Russia is prepared to engage in meaningful diplomacy,” he responded, adding that the U.S. would seize the opportunity should it detect a shift from the Kremlin.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 27, 2:51 PM EDT
Blinken and Lavrov to discuss US proposal to free Griner and Whelan
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he plans to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the coming days, marking the first time the two leaders will speak since the war began.
Blinken said a critical topic of discussion would be securing the freedom of detained Americans Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, revealing that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that.
“We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.
“I can’t and won’t get into any of the details of what we’ve proposed to the Russians over the course of some many weeks now,” Blinken said.
Blinken said President Joe Biden played an active role in crafting the proposal for Griner and Whelan.
Blinken also stressed, “My call with Foreign Minister Lavrov will not be a negotiation about Ukraine,” adding, “Any negotiation regarding Ukraine is for its government and people to determine.”
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 27, 9:32 AM EDT
Ukraine strikes key bridge in Russia-held Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a strategic bridge in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson early Wednesday, according to local officials.
High-precision missile strikes by the Ukrainian military damaged the Antonivskiy bridge, forcing the occupied authorities to close the structure to civilian traffic. The mile-long bridge across the Dnieper River is an essential artery used by Moscow to supply its troops occupying southern Ukraine.
“Strikes were delivered on the bridge, on its road. The bridge is currently closed to the civilian population,” Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, told local media on Wednesday.
The bridge’s pillars and spans were still intact as of Wednesday morning, according to Stremousov.
“It is simply that the number of holes on the road has increased. The strike on the bridge has affected only the civilian population,” he added.
According to Stremousov, Ukrainian forces hit the bridge with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) supplied by the United States. He said ferry crossings across the Dnieper River will be organized during the bridge’s restoration, and that traffic will resume in the near future.
“We have prepared a pontoon bridge. We have a ferry link,” he told local media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials said the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has surpassed 40,000, just more than five months after Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 27, 9:32 AM EDT
Ukraine strikes key bridge in Russia-held Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a strategic bridge in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson early Wednesday, according to local officials.
High-precision missile strikes by the Ukrainian military damaged the Antonivskiy bridge, forcing the occupied authorities to close the structure to civilian traffic. The mile-long bridge across the Dnieper River is an essential artery used by Moscow to supply its troops occupying southern Ukraine.
“Strikes were delivered on the bridge, on its road. The bridge is currently closed to the civilian population,” Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, told local media on Wednesday.
The bridge’s pillars and spans were still intact as of Wednesday morning, according to Stremousov.
“It is simply that the number of holes on the road has increased. The strike on the bridge has affected only the civilian population,” he added.
According to Stremousov, Ukrainian forces hit the bridge with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) supplied by the United States. He said ferry crossings across the Dnieper River will be organized during the bridge’s restoration, and that traffic will resume in the near future.
“We have prepared a pontoon bridge. We have a ferry link,” he told local media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials said the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has surpassed 40,000, just more than five months after Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
(KYIV, Ukraine) — Jalal Noory, an Afghan refugee in Ukraine who serves in the Ukrainian armed forces, defended the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv from being captured by Russian troops at the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine earlier this year. Noory and his fellow soldiers succeeded, repelling all Russian attacks on the capital.
A Ukrainian citizen since 2005, Noory first went to the frontline in 2014 as a volunteer following Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the Donbas region. Noory said he was called to the front by a sense of patriotism.
“I simply could not stay away,” he added.
“I wanted to share my combat experience with my Ukrainian comrades,” Noory said, adding that “war is part of every Afghan’s nature.”
Noory was born in Afghanistan in the mid 1970s. He still recalls the Soviet invasion of his native country in 1979.
“I remember the Soviet army crossing through my city when I was a child. We bought cigarettes and gave them to the Soviet soldiers. They gave us bullets in return to play with,” Noory said.
The conflict morphed into a full-scale war that lasted 10 years and cost the Soviets around 15,000 troops, according to official estimates. More than 3,000 men lost in the war were from Ukraine.
Up to two million Afghan civilians died in the fighting — or about 10% of Afghanistan’s population in 1979. Millions of others became refugees, including Noory.
Russian military tactics witnessed today in Ukraine are identical to those used in Afghanistan, Noory said.
“At the time, the Russians claimed their Afghan friends were calling for help. Just like now in Ukraine,” he said.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February this year under the pretext of protecting the Russian speaking population in the country, among other justifications proclaimed by Russian officials as the invasion unfolded.
“But it’s a lie. I’ve lived in Ukraine for 23 years and I’ve only spoken Russian. I never had a problem with the language,” Noory said.
Frightening and terrorizing the civilian population is another staple of Russian warfare that stood the test of time, according to Noory.
“Absolutely nothing has changed. They are hiding behind women, children, houses, and villages. They destroy them by rockets, bombs and tanks,” he said.
Noory, having grown up in the middle of a war, absorbed military knowledge from his early childhood. But after fleeing to Ukraine in 1999, he led a peaceful life.
Noory became a successful athlete, winning several titles in martial arts competitions. He also got married and had children.
Yet he did not hesitate for a second when Russia invaded Ukraine both in 2014 and this year.
“Someone must stop the Russians. Now it is the Ukrainians, but Poland or Lithuania could be next,” Noory said.
Noory said he did not only fight for his life, family, friends, or Ukraine. He’s protecting something much bigger, he added.
“I fight for every human. Not just an Afghan, Ukrainian or American, but for every human,” he said.
The most important thing in life is freedom, Noory said.
“If you don’t have freedom, you have nothing. So I must be free and my children have to be free,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — A report released Tuesday by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee says that China targeted the Federal Reserve for nearly 10 years, working to recruit and influence employees in an effort to obtain information and monetary benefit and to influence U.S. monetary policy.
The report zeroes in on what it describes as Chinese efforts to recruit American talent using programs that targeted individuals at the Fed — offering job prospects, academic positions and economic and research opportunities in an effort to gain access to sensitive data and information.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell refuted many aspects of the report. In a letter on Monday to Sen. Rob Portman, the committee’s ranking Republican, Powell wrote that he had “strong concerns” about the findings, including allegations that the Fed had failed to work with law enforcement to ward off outside influence.
The report’s conclusions are based off of counterintelligence data from the Fed and detail a variety of actions by the central banking system’s employees that the report describes as putting the institution at risk. It identifies 13 persons of interest, representing eight regional Fed banks, who have connections to known Chinese talent recruiters or “similar patterns of activity.”
The report details the interactions that some of these individuals had with China’s government — some of which were aggressive on the part of the Chinese.
In one series of events, the report says, a Fed employee was detained on four separate occasions during a trip to Shanghai in 2019. Chinese officials threatened the employee’s family, tapped their electronics and tried to force them to sign a letter stating they would not discuss the interactions, according to the report.
Another employee provided modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to a Chinese talent recruitment agency.
Still another individual, with “continuous contacts with Chinese nationals and universities,” tried twice to transfer Fed data to an external site.
One of the reasons Fed employees were vulnerable, the report asserts, is due to China “taking advantage” of America’s openness to participating in academic and research-based work.
Republicans on the Senate committee said the Fed remains poorly positioned to counter such overtures from China, citing a “lack of internal counterintelligence competency” at the bank and failure to sufficiently cooperate with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The result, the report says, is an institution unable to identify threats quickly or to investigate potential efforts by China to recruit U.S. talent.
Powell, the Fed chairman, pushed back in his letter.
“We value our interactions with the law enforcement community and would not hesitate to refer a matter to them or otherwise seek their counsel where appropriate. We would be concerned about any supportable allegation of wrongdoing, whatever the source,” he wrote to Portman. “In contrast, we are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report’s unfair, unsubstantiated and unverified insinuations about particular individual staff members.”
Portman, who previously led investigations of China’s recruiting efforts in the tech and science fields, urged the Fed to “do more” to protect itself.
“I am concerned by the threat to the Fed and hope our investigation, which is based on the Fed’s own documents and corresponds with assessments and recommendations made by the FBI, wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy,” he said in a statement. “The risk is clear, I urge the Fed to do more, working with the FBI, to counter this threat from one of our foremost foreign adversaries.”
Powell insisted the Fed was already being proactive.
“Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls and technology are robust and updated regularly,” he wrote. “We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary.”
But the report recommends that Congress act to institute safeguards for federally funded research at the Fed and other academic institutions. Portman is leading an effort to include these protections in a soon-to-pass bill on science and microchips.
(NEW YORK) — Pope Francis offered a long-sought apology to the Indigenous community in Canada on Monday over the Catholic church’s role in the generational abuse they suffered at Indigenous residential schools for nearly 150 years.
The schools were operated for decades by churches and the federal government of Canada to force assimilation.
“I am here because the first step of my penitential pilgrimage among you is that of again asking forgiveness, of telling you once more that I am deeply sorry,” Francis said. “Sorry for the ways in which, regrettably, many Christians supported the colonizing mentality of the powers that oppressed the Indigenous peoples.”
“I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples,” he added.
Beginning in the 1800s, thousands of Indigenous children from Canada were taken from their homes and families and placed into so-called residential schools aimed at ridding the children from ties to their Native communities, language and culture. Some of the schools were run by the Catholic church, where missionaries participated in the policies of forced assimilation and abuse.
Upon his arrival in Edmonton, the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta, Pope Francis was greeted on Sunday at the airport by First Nations, Metis and Inuit leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general.
Francis met with residential school survivors on Monday near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis in central Alberta.
Francis said that an apology is only a “starting point” and acknowledged that some in the Indigenous community have called for further action to address the injustice of the boarding school legacy.
“Dear brothers and sisters, many of you and your representatives have stated that begging pardon is not the end of the matter. I fully agree: that is only the first step, the starting point,” Francis said. “An important part of this process will be to conduct a serious investigation into the facts of what took place in the past and to assist the survivors of the residential schools to experience healing from the traumas they suffered.”
Chief Tony Alexis of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, who had called for Pope Francis to deliver an in-person apology on behalf of the church, told ABC News’ Marcus Moore that Francis’ visit is “a validation of what has happened with the church and how they’ve hurt and abused our people.”
Ahead of his historic seven-day trip to Canada, Pope Francis asked for prayers to accompany him on what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” and offered an apology to Native communities for the Catholic church’s role in the abuse.
“Unfortunately, in Canada, many Christians, including some members of religious institutions, contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation, that, in the past, gravely damaged, in various ways, the Native communities,” Francis said in a July 17 address delivered from the Apostolic Palace to the public in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, according to The Associated Press.
“For this reason, recently, at the Vatican, I received several groups, representatives of Indigenous peoples, to whom I manifested by sorrow and my solidarity for the evil they have suffered,″ Francis added.
According to a 2015 report released by Canada’s National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous residential schools were an integral part of the Canadian government’s “conscious policy of cultural genocide,” where children were disconnected from their families, punished for speaking their Native languages and some faced physical and sexual abuse.
“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been ‘absorbed into the body politic,’ there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights,” according to the report.
Reflecting on the generational trauma that was inflicted on Indigenous communities, Alexis recalled a conversation with a survivor who told him, “The only thing I learned in the residential school was how to hate myself.”
The pope’s visit comes a year after nearly 1,000 sets of human remains were found at the cemetery of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan in western Canada and at the former St. Eugene’s Mission School for Indigenous children in Aqam, a community in British Colombia. It is unclear how many total students died at residential boarding schools and what their causes of death were.
After the graves were discovered in Canada, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position — launched a probe in June 2021 into the U.S. government’s own role in funding Indian boarding schools as part of an effort to dispossess Indigenous people of their land to expand the United States.
The probe’s initial findings were outlined in a May report that found more than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools run by the American government and churches.
Native Nations scholars estimate that almost 40,000 children have died at Indigenous boarding schools. According to the federal report, the Interior Department “expects that continued investigation will reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”
Haaland, whose grandparents attended Indian boarding schools, now oversees the government agency that historically played a major role in the forced relocation and oppression of Indigenous people and said that her work is a chance to bring some healing to the community.
“I have a great obligation, but I was taught by my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother that when you are asked to do something for your people that you step up,” Haaland told “Nightline” in an interview earlier this year.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou, Kiara Alfonseca and Tenzin Shakya contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Pope Francis is set to deliver a long-sought apology to the Indigenous community in Canada over the Catholic church’s role in the generational abuse they suffered at Indigenous residential schools for nearly 150 years.
The schools were operated for decades by churches and the federal government of Canada to force assimilation.
Beginning in the 1800s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children from Canada and the United States were taken from their homes and families and placed into so-called residential schools aimed at ridding the children from ties to their Native communities, language and culture. Some of the schools were run by the Catholic church, where missionaries participated in the policies of forced assimilation and abuse.
Upon his arrival in Edmonton, the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta, Pope Francis was greeted on Sunday at the airport by First Nations, Metis and Inuit leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mary Simon, who is Canada’s first Indigenous governor general.
“[Pope Francis] is visiting Canada to deliver the Roman Catholic Church’s apology to First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Survivors and their descendants – for its role in operating residential schools, and for causing pain and suffering that continues to this very day,” Trudeau tweeted on Sunday.
Francis is set to meet with residential school survivors on Monday near the site of a former residential school in Maskwacis in central Alberta, where he is expected to pray and deliver an apology.
“Dear brothers and sisters of [Canada], I come among you to meet the indigenous peoples. I hope, with God’s grace, that my penitential pilgrimage might contribute to the journey of reconciliation already undertaken. Please accompany me with [prayer],” Francis tweeted on Sunday.
Chief Tony Alexis of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation, who had called for Pope Francis to deliver an in-person apology on behalf of the church, told ABC News’ Marcus Moore that Francis’ visit is “a validation of what has happened with the church and how they’ve hurt and abused our people.”
Ahead of his historic seven-day trip to Canada, Pope Francis asked for prayers to accompany him on what he called a “penitential pilgrimage” and offered an apology to Native communities for the Catholic church’s role in the abuse.
According to a 2015 report released by Canada’s National Center for Truth and Reconciliation, Indigenous residential schools were an integral part of the Canadian government’s “conscious policy of cultural genocide,” where children were disconnected from their families, punished for speaking their Native languages and some faced physical and sexual abuse.
“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources. If every Aboriginal person had been ‘absorbed into the body politic,’ there would be no reserves, no Treaties, and no Aboriginal rights,” according to the report.
Reflecting on the generational trauma that was inflicted on Indigenous communities, Alexis recalled a conversation with a survivor who told him, “The only thing I learned in the residential school was how to hate myself.”
The pope’s visit comes a year after nearly 1,000 sets of human remains were found at the cemetery of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan in western Canada and at the former St. Eugene’s Mission School for Indigenous children in Aqam, a community in British Colombia. It is unclear how many total students died at residential boarding schools and what their causes of death were.
After the graves were discovered in Canada, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position — launched a probe in June 2021 into the U.S. government’s own role in funding Indian boarding schools as part of an effort to dispossess Indigenous people of their land to expand the United States.
The probe’s initial findings were outlined in a May report that found more than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools run by the American government and churches.
Native Nations scholars estimate that almost 40,000 children have died at Indigenous boarding schools. According to the federal report, the Interior Department “expects that continued investigation will reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”
Haaland, whose grandparents attended Indian boarding schools, now oversees the government agency that historically played a major role in the forced relocation and oppression of Indigenous people and said that her work is a chance to bring some healing to the community.
“I have a great obligation, but I was taught by my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother that when you are asked to do something for your people that you step up,” Haaland told ABC’s Nightline in an interview earlier this year.
(LONDON) — Prince Harry has scored an early victory in his legal battle to ensure he and his family are protected by security when they are in the U.K.
A judge in London ruled Friday that the uke of Sussex’s case can go to the High Court in London, meaning Harry, sixth in line to the British throne, will face off with the Home Office, which oversees immigration and security, in court.
Harry is fighting back against a 2020 decision by the government that denied his family police protection while in Britain after he and his wife Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, stepped down from roles as senior working roles.
At the time, the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures made a decision that security would be granted on a case-by-case basis.
Harry, who now lives in California with Meghan and their children Archie and Lilibet, has said he wants police protection for his family while on British soil and is willing to pay for the cost himself.
“He says that since birth, he’s been born into a world that requires a level security,” said Omid Scobie, ABC News royal contributor and the author of Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of A Modern Royal Family. “Not just to keep himself safe, but also his extended family, the people he marries, the children he has.”
Harry has only returned to the U.K. a handful of times since moving in 2020.
He and Meghan made their first joint return to the U.K. in April, where they met briefly with Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on their way to the Invictus Games.
The couple then returned with their children in June to celebrate the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, their first known trip to the U.K. as a family of four.
Archie, 3, was born in the U.K. but had not traveled back publicly with his parents since they moved to California in 2020.
Lilibet was born last June in Santa Barbara, California, making her the first senior royal baby born in the U.S., and the first great-grandchild of the queen to be born outside of the U.K.
Since moving to California, the Sussexes have relied on a privately-funded security team, but Harry’s legal team has said they hope to expand that soon.
The family’s current security situation is similar to that of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana who had to rely on private security protection after her divorce from Harry’s father Prince Charles in 1996.
One year later, in 1997, Diana died in a car crash in Paris after the car she was riding in was pursued by paparazzi.
“When Diana died, she didn’t have police protection. She had a private security team at that point,” said Victoria Murphy, ABC News royal contributor. “And I think it’s very clear that Prince Harry feels that the police protection is superior and that that is what he wants for his family.”
(NEW YORK) — An eruption of the Sakurajima volcano in Japan has raised emergency alerts of their highest levels and prompted evacuations for residents nearby.
The volcano, located in Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima on the western island of Kyushu, erupted at 8:05 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Japan’s Meteorological Agency.
The emergency alert in the region has been raised to level 5, the highest, and evacuations were ordered for residents living within a 2-mile range of the crater, including parts of Arimura-cho, Furusato-cho and Kagoshima City, where about 600,000 people live.
The volcano is still “very active,” and windows can break due to the vibrations from the continuous explosions and falling debris, including large rocks and ash, according to the agency.
The ash and smaller rocks can also be carried on by winds, NHK, the Japan Broadcast Corporation and a partner of ABC News, reported.
Frequent explosive activity has been occurring at Sakurajima for centuries, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. There has been persistent activity at the Minamidake summit cone and crater since 1955, and the Showa crater has also been intermittently active since 2006.
Activity decreased significantly in May 2021 and throughout the rest of the year, when the number of monthly explosions and ash emissions were both much lower compared with the first half of the year, according to the Smithsonian.
A task force has been set up at the prime minister’s office, which has called up a team of officials from various agencies to assess the extent of the emergency, NHK reported.
Additional information on the severity of the eruption was not immediately available.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — At least 17 people believed to be Haitian migrants were killed early Sunday when an alleged human-smuggling speedboat they were on capsized in the Bahamas, authorities said.
Another 25 aboard the vessel were rescued and a search was continuing Sunday afternoon for others still unaccounted for, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis said at a news conference.
Davis said there were about 60 people on the boat when it capsized. He said the vessel’s destination was Miami.
The Royal Bahamas Defense Force responded to calls of the capsized boat around 1:30 a.m., officials said. Search and rescue crews found the vessel about seven miles off the coast of New Providence, the most populated island in the Bahamas, authorities said.
Davis said the passengers aboard the boat are believed to be Haitian migrants. The vessel capsized along a popular route for Haitian migrants attempting to enter the United States.
Bahamian Police Commissioner Clayton Fernander said two people suspected of being human smugglers were taken into custody.
“We take this opportunity to strongly condemn the organization of smuggling operations, which risk human life and compromise our national security,” Davis said, “Those found to be involved will face prosecution.”
Fernander said a preliminary investigation suggests the twin-engine speedboat left a docking facility in New Providence around 1 a.m. and capsized a short time later.
He said one passenger was found alive under the boat’s hull and officials believe he survived by finding an air pocket.
The Royal Bahamas Defense Force released a photo showing the hull of the capsized vessel partially sticking out of the water.
The cause of the incident is under investigation. It was unclear if anyone aboard the vessel was wearing a life jacket.
The tragedy comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and the Miami-Dade Police Department intercepted a sailboat on Thursday packed with 150 migrants that ran aground in Boca Chita Key near Key Biscayne and the Biscayne National Park, officials said. Authorities said several children were among those rescued.
U.S. Coast Guard crews also responded to the incident in Boca Chita Key and passed out life jackets to the migrants before they were transferred to cutters and those needing treatment were taken to Homestead Hospital, according to the Coast Guard.
Since October, the U.S. Coast Guard reports it has intercepted and returned more than 6,100 Haitian migrants attempting to reach the United States.
In January, 34 Haitian migrants died when a human smuggling boat they were on capsized in the Straits of Florida. The only person to survive was found clinging to the vessel’s hull, the Coast Guard said in a statement. The survivor, according to the Coast Guard, told investigators that no one on the overturned vessel was wearing a life jacket.
Many Haitian migrants have fled their country due to the devastating impacts of natural disasters and political instability that have resulted in economic struggles.
