coastguard

At least 11 people believed to still be missing, with rescue operations underway.

The US coastguard has said it rescued 16 people from the Pacific Ocean after a boat sank off Mexico’s Baja coast.

The coastguard said on Friday it responded to a Mayday call reporting that a boat was sinking. The search is ongoing for 11 people believed to be still missing.

The boat went down about 225km (140 miles) west of Ensenada, Mexico.

A rescue helicopter reached the site about two hours after someone on the boat transmitted the Mayday call at about 1am (08:00 GMT) on Friday, said coastguard Lieutenant Santiago Tamburini.

It took about 90 minutes for the coastguard crew, which included a rescue swimmer, to pull the 16 people from the water, Tamburini said.

The people rescued were Mexican nationals, according to the Mexican consulate.

One survivor was being treated for a suspected shark bite and two were in critical condition, authorities said.

The rescued were flown by helicopter to San Diego, California, and transported to hospitals. The Mexican consulate in San Diego said it offered consular assistance.

The coastguard and US Navy are continuing to search the area with two helicopters, a fixed-wing plane, a cutter and a navy combat ship.

The boat sank in an area frequented by smugglers transporting migrants to the US. It is also popular with fishing and leisure boats.

Details about the boat’s origin, destination and what it was doing are not clear. No vessel, only debris, was found, and it was unclear what type of boat was involved, the coastguard said.

“Boats in that area can be for fishing, leisure, personal recreation. We just don’t know what they were doing out there. We all know it’s a suspected smuggling route,” Tamburini said.

Debris found off Nantucket island after the air ambulance disappeared while flying from Bermuda to Boston.

The United States coastguard has suspended its search for six people on board a medical transport jet that crashed while flying from Bermuda to Boston.

“Suspending a search is not an easy decision,” Rear Admiral Matthew Lake, commander of the ⁠coastguard’s Northeast District, said in a statement on Sunday.

The search was called off after teams spent about 66 hours covering 4,445 miles (7,150km) by air and sea and confirmed that debris found off the shore of Massachusetts’s Nantucket Island came from the aircraft.

The Gulfstream G100 carried two pilots, two medical staff, a patient and a relative, Clarence Togeretz, director of flight operations at Canada-based Latitude Air Ambulance, told Canada’s public broadcaster CBC.

The four crew members were Canadian, and the two passengers were Bermudian, according to authorities.

In a statement on Sunday, Latitude Air Ambulance said, “Given the information shared by authorities and the conclusion of ⁠the search-and-rescue phase, we must now face the heartbreaking reality that the four members of our Latitude team, our patient and the patient’s family escort, who were ⁠aboard Heartbeat 104, are presumed to have died.”

Attention has turned to what happened in the jet’s final minutes, when flight-tracking data showed a steep descent and air traffic controllers struggled to re-establish contact.

Authorities have not determined what caused the aircraft to come down.

The aircraft had flown to Bermuda to collect the patient and was heading to Boston Logan International airport.

The US Federal Aviation Administration alerted the coastguard at about 2am on Saturday (06:00 GMT) after contact with the jet was lost.

Lake said at a Sunday news conference that the water around the debris was about 80 to 90 feet (24-27 metres) deep.

He offered condolences to the families of those on board and thanked the agencies involved in the operation.

Latitude Air Ambulance specialises in medical evacuation and repatriation flights, carrying patients home from other countries.

The company says its missions are normally staffed by two pilots and medical personnel.