US Coast Guard crews searching the Florida Straits have found what they believed was the speedboat used by some 30 illegal migrants who set out from Cuba last Friday but never arrived.
So far there was no sign of any people on or near the overturned vessel, said a Coast Guard spokeswoman. She added that two Coast Guard cutters were heading to the site, about 47 miles southeast of Key West. Two Coast Guard helicopters were also looking.
The 30 people were crammed onto the boat and may have run into bad weather at sea. The Miami Heraldsaid the missing included 12 or 13 children, including a 9-month-old baby.
The white, 30-foot boat with two outboard engines was spotted by a Coast Guard C-130 plane that had been part of an intense search for the missing vessel launched after worried Cuban exiles reported on Saturday that their relatives had not turned up.
The Coast Guard had searched some 30,000 square miles, a broad area between Cuba and the Miami area, before spotting what it thought was the missing vessel in the Florida Straits, the 90-mile stretch of water that separates Cuba from the southern tip of Florida.
Like hundreds of Cubans who try to leave the island every year for the United States, the lost group had probably paid thousands of dollars a head for the journey.