At least 54 dead as freight truck packed with migrants crashes in Mexico

No less than 54 folks have been killed and greater than 100 injured, when a packed freight truck flipped over and crashed right into a bridge southern Mexico on Thursday.

Officers within the Mexican state of Chiapas stated that many of the victims have been migrants coming from Central America, notably Honduras, that means they have been in all probability on their strategy to attempt to get in to the US.

Luis Manuel García Moreno, head of the Chiapas Civil Safety Service, advised Milenio TV that the truck had been travelling at extreme pace after which overturned on a steep bend, crashing right into a pedestrian bridge.

Some studies declare there have been as much as 200 folks packed onto the truck and the youngest victims have been youngsters.

Graphic footage from bystanders confirmed bodied piled within the crushed trailer, as emergency providers and navy personnel labored to free these trapped within the wreckage. The motive force of the lorry reportedly fled the scene instantly after the crash, in line with eyewitnesses.

The accident occurred about 125 miles north of Mexico’s border with Guatemala, a frequent crossing level for migrants looking for entry to the US from Central America and much past.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated: “I profoundly remorse the tragedy attributable to the overturning of a trailer carrying central American migrants in Chiapas. It’s a nice sorrow. I embrace the households of the victims.”

Guatemala’s president Alejandro Gianmettei stated he would provide all mandatory help, together with the repatriation of our bodies.

A document 1.7 million migrants from world wide, many fleeing gang violence, poverty, uncontrolled Covid unfold of their native nations, have been caught making an attempt to enter the US illegally within the 12 months ending in October, a document quantity after the lull of 2020.

These coming from or by way of extra southern states should cross by way of Mexico, normally with the help of folks smugglers who generally rob or extort them. Official figures present that greater than 228,000 migrants have handed by way of Mexico looking for to achieve the US this yr – the very best determine in 15 years.

The Mexican authorities has hardened its enforcement of immigration legal guidelines, partly on account of strain from the US.

But the authorities may also be a menace: in February, 12 Mexican cops have been arrested for the bloodbath of 13 Guatemalan migrants and 6 different folks discovered inside a burned-out pickup truck 40 miles south of the US border.

Thursday’s accident got here after Mexican authorities arrested 600 folks being smuggled in two truck trailers by way of the state of Veracruz, coming not solely from close by nations comparable to El Salvador and Nicaragua however from India, Ghana and Bangladesh.