Dozens killed after truck packed with migrants crashes in Mexico
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Loading... - John Fraser
- 10 Dec 2021
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A cargo truck jammed with more than 100 people thought to be migrants from Central America has rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge in southern Mexico, killing at least 53 people and injuring dozens more.
The crash on Thursday on a highway near Tuxtla Gutierrez, state capital of Chiapas, might have been triggered by the weight of the truck’s human cargo causing it to tip over on a bend, local officials said.
Photos from the scene showed victims strewn across the road and inside the truck’s freight compartment.
The Mexican attorney general’s office put the death toll at 53, and local officials said more than 50 were injured. About 40 of them had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals.
It was one of the worst single-day death tolls for migrants in Mexico since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern state of Tamaulipas.
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The victims appeared to be immigrants from Central America, though their nationalities had not yet been confirmed. Moreno reported that some of the survivors said they were from the neighbouring country of Guatemala.
Moreno said that it appeared the sheer weight of the truck’s human cargo may have caused it to tip over, and that as the vehicle toppled over it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. It is not unusual for freight trucks in Mexico to be carrying so many people in migrant-smuggling operations in southern Mexico.
Rescue workers who first arrived at the scene said that even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and had fled for fear of being detained by immigration agents.
One paramedic said some of those who fled into surrounding neighbourhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape.
The truck had originally been a closed freight module of the kind used to transport perishable goods. The container was smashed open by the force of the impact. It was unclear if the driver survived.
Those who spoke to survivors said the migrants told of boarding the truck in Mexico, near the border with Guatemala, and of paying between $2,500 and $3,500 to be transported to Mexico’s central state of Puebla. Once there, they would have contracted with another set of migrant smugglers to take them to the US border. Read More…
