The death toll from the Friday capsizing rose to six, Fernando Castillo, provincial director of Dominican Civil Defense, told AFP.
The boat was headed for the US territory of Puerto Rico carrying between 40 and 50 people, with 17 rescued.
Among the bodies recovered so far were a woman, three men and a child. The deceased are Dominican and Haitian nationals.
Strong waves, large amounts of sargassum seaweed and dust clouds blowing in from the Sahara desert were hampering the search efforts, said Civil Defense Director Juan Salas.
"Today the biggest concern is the sargassum, which makes it difficult to see any body or any element in the water," the official told AFP.
The Dominican Navy said the migrants "were trying to travel illegally to Puerto Rico" from the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, near Punta Cana.
They were being ferried in a so-called "yola" boat, which are generally constructed from wood or fiberglass and do not comply with safety regulations, according to authorities.
Migrants pay as much as $7,000 for a one-way trip to Puerto Rico from the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with crisis-torn Haiti.
The irregular migration route has become increasingly popular in the last decade.
Mob lynches five alleged thieves in quake-hit Guatemalan town
Guatemala City (AFP) July 11, 2025 - An angry mob lynched five men accused of robbing homes in a Guatemalan town hit by a series of earthquakes that left seven people dead, police said Friday.
The incident occurred on Thursday night in Santa Maria de Jesus, the municipality worst affected by the tremors of up to 5.7 magnitude, which began on Tuesday.
"Residents detained five people who were beaten and lynched because they were accused of being thieves," police spokesman Cesar Mateo said.
The men were accused of using the cover of darkness to break into homes following the earthquakes, which led people to sleep in shelters or with relatives, he told AFP.
"While it's true that robbery is illegal, lynching is also a crime," Mateo said.
Vigilante violence is common in Guatemala in response to impunity exploited by criminals.
Videos circulating on social media showed a man being beaten on the ground by residents and then set on fire with gasoline.
Santa Maria de Jesus, home to an Indigenous Mayan community, had no power and access roads were cut off by landslides, prompting the government to fly in humanitarian aid.
Around half of all buildings in the municipality of 27,000 residents had some kind of damage, according to mayor Mario Perez.
Between 2008 and 2020, vigilante justice left 361 people dead and 1,396 injured in the Central American country, according to Mutual Support Group, a local civil society organization.
Two missing as heavy rains hit Spain's Catalonia
Madrid (AFP) July 12, 2025 -
Two people were missing in Catalonia Saturday after much of the region in northeast Spain was hit by torrential rains, officials said, briefly forcing the suspension of rail services there.
Spain's weather service Aemet said about 10 centimetres (four inches) of rain fell in the space of several hours near Barcelona.
Firefighters posted on X that they were looking for two people reportedly swept away by a river in Cubelles, a town some 50 kilometres (31 miles) from Barcelona.
Spain's Renfe train company suspended all train travel throughout Catalonia for a few hours as a precaution, before resuming service later in the day.
A hospital in Barcelona was flooded and had to refuse patients, roads were blocked, and a plane that took off from Barcelona for the United States had to turn back after its nose was damaged by hail.
Other regions of the north such as Aragon were also hit by heavy rain Saturday.
Last October, torrential rains sparked devastating floods in the eastern province of Valencia, killing 225 people and causing widespread destruction, the country's deadliest such disaster in decades.
Peru Congress approves amnesty for military accused of decades-old rights abuses
Lima (AFP) July 10, 2025 -
Peru's Congress has approved a law granting amnesty to military, police and other forces prosecuted for rights violations committed during the nation's bloody, decades-old campaign against leftist guerrillas.
The law, which still needs approval from the president, benefits uniformed personnel who were accused, are still being investigated or are being tried for crimes stemming from their participation in the state's fight against left-wing insurgents from 1980 to 2000.
On Wednesday, a congressional commission approved the bill granting amnesty to members of the armed forces, national police and local self-defense committees, said lawmaker Alejandro Cavero, third vice president of Congress.
The bill was presented by Congressman Fernando Rospigliosi, from the right-wing Popular Force party of Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former leader Alberto Fujimori.
Fujimori's decade as president from 1990 was marked by the ruthless, authoritarian way he governed.
He was jailed for atrocities -- including the massacre of civilians by the army -- but released from prison in 2023 on humanitarian grounds.
The new law specifies that a humanitarian amnesty will be granted to people over 70 years old who have been sentenced or served a prison sentence.
"Military prisoners over 70 will be released. Open cases will be closed," Rospigliosi told AFP.
- 'Impunity' -
But critics warned the legislation would hinder the search for truth about the period of violent conflict, which pitted state forces against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebels, and left around 70,000 people dead.
"Granting amnesty to military and police officers cannot be a reason for impunity," Congressman Alex Flores of the Socialist party said during debate on the bill.
After Congress passed it, the National Human Rights Coordinator said on social media platform X that "impunity does not hide the crime, it magnifies it."
Amnesty International earlier urged the legislature to side with victims and reject the bill.
"The right to justice of thousands of victims of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence would be violated," the rights group said on X.
In August 2024, Peru adopted a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002, effectively shutting down hundreds of investigations into alleged crimes committed during the fighting from 1980 to 2000.
The initiative benefited the late Fujimori and 600 prosecuted military personnel.
According to Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, there are more than 4,000 clandestine graves in Peru as a result of the two decades of political violence.
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