3 migrants die after boats capsize off Panama’s Caribbean coast

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PANAMA CITY (AP) — Three people believed to be migrants died and a fourth was hospitalized after two boats capsized off Panama’s Caribbean coast Tuesday, authorities said.

The Panama Maritime Authority said in a statement that the incidents occurred along a remote stretch of coastline near the border with Colombia.

The area has seen increased reverse migration over the past year as migrants try to return to their South American nations.

The boats were headed to Puerto Obaldia in the Guna Yala Indigenous region that borders Colombia, the maritime authority said.

The autonomous Indigenous authorities of the General Guna Congress posted on social media that those who died were on one of the boats which had left Miramar with 16 people aboard. It said the passengers were migrants.

They said the first people to reach the overturned boat found four people trapped underneath. Two Venezuelan women and a Colombian man died, while a third Venezuelan woman was hospitalized, their statement said. Twelve others were rescued.

Migrants from countries like Venezuela and Colombia, unwilling to once again risk their lives crossing the Darien jungle that divides Colombia and Panama, pay boats to carry them back to South America along the Caribbean Sea off Panama’s coast. Migrants are then dropped off in northern Colombia, where many continue on their journeys.

In February 2025, an 8-year-old Venezuelan boy died when another boat headed for Colombia flipped in rough seas. The other passengers were rescued.