40 migrants dead after boat catches fire off Haiti

At least 40 migrants have died and several others were injured after a boat they were traveling in caught fire off the northern coast of Haiti, a UN agency said Friday.

The UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that the Haitian Coast Guard rescued 41 survivors, 11 of whom were hospitalized, including some for burns.

But "at least 40 migrants have died, and several others were injured," the IOM said.

The boat, carrying more than 80 people, had left the port of Labadee on Wednesday en route to the Turks and Caicos Islands, a 150-mile (240-kilometer) journey, the IOM reported, citing Haiti's National Office for Migration.

There was no immediate information on the cause of the fire.

Migration from the poverty-stricken Caribbean country has been surging for months, as thousands of people flee a spike in violence from criminal gangs that now control wide swaths of territory.

"Haiti's socioeconomic situation is in agony," said Gregoire Goodstein, IOM's chief of mission in the country. "The extreme violence over the past months has only brought Haitians to resort to desperate measures even more."

Hundreds of police officers from Kenya have deployed in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince, as part of an international effort to bring stability to a country riven by political, social and economic chaos.

Criminal gangs now control 80 percent of the capital city, with residents saying they have faced murder, rape, theft and kidnapping for ransom.

Since February 29, Haitian Coast Guard units in the north have observed an increasing number of departures by boat, the IOM said.

Countries including the United States, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Jamaica say they have intercepted a growing number of boats originating from Haiti.

More than 86,000 migrants have been forcibly returned to Haiti by neighboring countries this year, according to the IOM.