Three people believed to be migrants died and another was hospitalized after two boats capsized off Panama’s Caribbean coast on Tuesday, authorities said.
The Panama Maritime Authority said the incidents happened along a remote stretch of coast near the border with Colombia, a region that has seen more “reverse migration” in the past year as people try to return to their home countries in South America.
The boats were headed to Puerto Obaldia in the Guna Yala Indigenous region, the authority said. The autonomous Indigenous leadership of the General Guna Congress posted on social media that those who died were on a boat that had left Miramar with 16 people aboard and that the passengers were migrants.
According to the statement, the first rescuers to reach the overturned boat found four people trapped underneath. Two Venezuelan women and a Colombian man died, and another Venezuelan woman was taken to hospital. Twelve others were pulled to safety.
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Many migrants from countries such as Venezuela and Colombia are now choosing to pay for boat trips along the Caribbean Sea to return to northern Colombia rather than risk the dangerous journey through the Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama.
In a similar incident in February 2025, an 8-year-old Venezuelan boy died when another migrant boat bound for Colombia capsized in rough seas, though other passengers were rescued.