(Tapachula) At least 10 migrants died and about 15 other people were injured when a cargo truck they were traveling in overturned on a highway in southern Mexico, near the border with Guatemala.
It is the latest in a series of migrant deaths in Mexico, amid an influx of migrants heading towards the US border.
The Chiapas state civil defense office said the truck crash happened Sunday on a highway near the town of Pijijiapan, about 175 kilometers from the Guatemalan border.
The office released photos showing a small truck with an open bed overturned on its side and victims dumped on the side of the highway.
The nationalities of the victims have not been released by authorities, but an employee of the prosecutor’s office said they were largely Cuban migrants who hitched rides in passing vehicles. The employee was not authorized to speak on the record.
It is also unclear how many of the 15 injured were migrants. There was no immediate information on their condition or nationality.
Mexican authorities generally prohibit undocumented migrants from riding buses, so those who cannot afford to hire smugglers often walk along highways, hitching rides on passing trucks.
Dreadful week
The last week has been disastrous with the deaths of several migrants across the country.
An Ecuadorian migrant died and 10 others from Colombia and Guatemala were injured in an accident Saturday as they were being taken for processing in a van operated by Mexico’s immigration agency.
Mexico’s National Migration Institute said the van was involved in a collision with a bus in the town of Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, California.
On Friday, two Mexican migrants were shot and killed on the Mexican side of the border and three others were shot and wounded, the Migration Institute said. At dawn, rescue services discovered a group of 14 Mexican nationals on Cuchuma hill, near Tecate, a town located between Mexicali and Tijuana.
The cause of the shooting is not known, but migrant crossings often involve deals with local cartels for the right of passage. Migrants are sometimes shot if their smuggler works for a rival gang or if they have not paid their passage fee. Migrants are also often robbed by roving gangs of thieves and kidnappers in border areas.
A truck overturned on the highway in Chiapas on Thursday, killing two Central American migrants and injuring 27 others.
The Migration Institute said Friday that 52 migrants were traveling in an overcrowded dump truck when the driver lost control and overturned. The injured, including six children, were taken to hospital, where they were all granted legal asylum cards, as victims of a crime committed on Mexican territory.
Two Central American migrants died on Wednesday after trying to board a moving train in the state of Coahuila, near the Texas border.