Boat with illegal immigrants sinks in Pacific; over 100 feared dead

The boat, which was designed to hold 15 people, was believed to be headed to the U.S.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- A small boat overloaded with more than 100 illegal immigrants capsized and sank in rough waters in the Pacific Ocean, and only nine survivors were found, clinging to a wooden box and buoys, officials said Wednesday.

Ecuadorean Navy Capt. Armando Elizalde told Colombian RCN television most of the 113 people aboard "sank with the boat." The Colombian Navy said the immigrants' boat was meant to hold only 15 people.

The disaster that hit the boat -- whose passengers were believed to be heading for the United States -- occurred Friday night more than 100 miles off the coast of southwest Colombia.

"The boat, with way too many people aboard, was unable to resist a strong wave and it tipped over," Elizalde said, adding that most of those aboard were in the ship's hold when it capsized and could not escape. Thirteen people emerged, but four of them later slipped under the waves, he said.

An Ecuadorean fishing boat found the survivors -- seven men and two women -- on Sunday, Elizalde said. They were later transferred to an Ecuadorean Coast Guard cutter and on Wednesday returned to Ecuador, their faces scorched and peeling from sunburn.

Most of the survivors were in their 20s, although youngest was 15 years old.

Julio Cisalima, 25, said he held on to a gas container to keep afloat.

"The boat tipped, there were lots of people. We then spent two days at sea and had to swim a lot," he told Ecuadorean television.

Another survivor said he held on to a buoy.

"There was a little bag of water floating and that's what we were surviving on," he told Colombia's Caracol television.

The Colombian navy and Ecuador's coast guard were searching for others from the boat.

The disaster highlighted the perilous journey that migrants seeking to escape poverty in their homeland undertake to reach the United States.

Traffickers often use Ecuador's coast as a launching point, frequently taking illegal immigrants to Guatemala or Mexico so they can travel overland into the United States.

Last May, a Costa Rican fisherman rescued 88 would-be migrants from Ecuador and Peru from their foundering vessel after he found a message in a bottle they had tied to a float marking one of his long fishing lines.

The migrants said that they had paid traffickers as much as $3,000 each as a down payment for the trip, with a promise to pay another $7,000 at the journey's end.