MEXICO CITY — At least 54 people were killed and more than 100
injured in a horrific truck accident in southern Mexico on Thursday,
authorities said, with most of the victims believed to be migrants coming from
Central America.
اضافة اعلان
The accident, which took place in southern Chiapas state,
occurred when a truck carrying more than 100 people overturned Thursday
afternoon near Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, the head of the state Civil
Protection Service, Luis Manuel García Moreno, told Milenio TV.
The accident is one of the deadliest involving migrants in
decades and follows the death of 13 migrants in a car crash on the US border in
March.
García said that, based on witness testimony, the truck was
traveling at excessive speed and then flipped over while rounding a sharp
curve, with the trailer carrying the migrants then crashing into a pedestrian
bridge and construction nearby.
Images and video shared on social media showed more than a dozen
bodies laid out on the road covered in white sheets near what appeared to be
the twisted remains of an overturned vehicle.
The state’s governor, Rutilio Escandón, said on Twitter that 105
people had been injured in the crash. The accident occurred on the highway
between the town of Chiapa de Corzo and the state capital.
“My solidarity with the victims of the traffic accident,” he
said in another tweet. “I have given instructions to provide prompt attention
and assistance to the injured. Responsibility will be determined according to the
law.”
Bordering Guatemala, the state of Chiapas has in recent years
seen a surge of migrants from Central America, many of them being smuggled
through Mexico on their way to the U.S. border. A record 1.7 million migrants,
mainly from Mexico and Central America, were found trying to enter the United
States illegally in the 12 months leading up to October.
Attempting to reach the United States, whether to seek asylum or
to search for economic opportunities, is a dangerous and at times deadly
process, with migrants traveling through cartel-infested territory in northern
Mexico, often paying steep prices to smugglers to get them to the border.
Migrants are regularly packed into trucks or cars as they make
the journey north, and frequently fall prey to violence along the way. In
January, the bodies of 19 people, most of them migrants, were found in a
charred pickup truck near the U.S. border. A group of 12 police officers were
later arrested in connection with the crime.
At least 3,575 deaths have been documented on the U.S.-Mexico
border since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration,
with 650 people killed attempting to cross the U.S. border this year alone —
the highest number since the agency began documenting deaths in 2014.
“The rising migrant death toll in the region is highly
alarming,” Michele Klein-Solomon, the organization’s regional director for
Central, North America and the Caribbean, said in a statement Wednesday.
At least 750 migrants have been killed trying to cross Mexico
since 2014, according to the agency, and thousands more have simply
disappeared.
Thursday’s accident occurred one day after the United States
relaunched a contentious migrant enforcement program known as Remain in Mexico,
which would force asylum-seekers to wait across the border while their cases
are determined in
US courts. The program has been criticized by human rights
groups because of the unsafe conditions migrants face in Mexico.
“Under the Remain in Mexico program, the United States and
Mexico have knowingly put thousands of asylum-seekers’ lives in danger,” Ari
Sawyer, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday.
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