Latin America

The US Coast Guard says more than two dozen Cuban migrants jumped from a boat and swam to shore in South Florida. The Miami Herald reports that once the 27 migrants made it to land, they ran and hid. Officers with the US Customs and Border Protection, aided by Miami police officers, were searching for them on a barrier island of Miami, and reports say some were found. Some roads in Miami’s Virginia Key were shut down during the search.

Survivors sifting through the rubble of their earthquake-toppled cinderblock homes in Haiti were rattled by a magnitude 5.2 aftershock that caused panic and threatened to raise the death toll even further from 12. The US Geological Survey said the epicentre of the aftershock was located 15.8km north-northwest of Port-de-Paix, the city hard hit by Sunday’s 5.9 magnitude earthquake. Yesterday’s aftershock had a depth of 10km. “It was an aftershock. It was at the same location,” said Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the USGS. “This is the first significant aftershock.” The tremors caused panic on streets where emergency teams were providing relief to victims of Sunday’s quake, which toppled cinderblock homes and rickety buildings in several cities. Haiti’s civil protection agency said at least seven people died in the coastal city of Port-de-Paix and three people died in the nearby community of Gros-Morne in Artibonite province.