The number of immigrants killed when a truck overturned this Thursday on a highway in the state of Chiapas, southeastern Mexico, has risen to 55, Mexican government authorities reported.
According to the report of the State Attorney’s Office, the trailer collided with the wall of a pedestrian bridge and after the impact, the box was left without the roof and then overturned to one side. As a result of the crash, dozens of migrants died instantly. The national coordinator of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez Alzúa, who went to the scene of the events, pointed out that so far there are 152 migrants, 55 of them deceased, 73 injured and 24 uninjured migrants.
The official revealed that also many minors were injured Although he did not specify the number and said that for now he is trying to identify data and nationality of the deceased and injured.
The accident happened around 3:30 p.m. local time when a trailer transporting more than a hundred Central American migrants, in unsafe conditions. crammed into your dry box, overturned in a curve, due to the speeding, on the Chiapa de Corzo-Tuxtla Gutiérrez highway.
As the hours have passed, inhabitants of the place where the accident occurred have left candles as a sign of peace and rest for the victims. “The neighbors come to pray and leave a candle for the victims for their good journey. It was difficult to see so many dead people and the children cry,” one of the residents of the place, Armando Aguilar Padilla, explained to Efe.
Videos posted on networks have allowed us to see the magnitude of the tragedy, one of the most serious remembered of this type in Mexico. After the first rescue work bodies were seen piled up on the asphalt.
According to the injured, the trip began in the city of Comitán de Domínguez, Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, and witnesses to the accident have stated that the accident occurred due to speeding.
The Mexican government has received criticism for its treatment of migrants and the current deployment of tens of thousands of agents of the Armed Forces on the northern and southern borders for control tasks, as part of cooperation on immigration matters with the United States. Faced with this scenario, human traffickers take the opportunity to transfer migrants illegally and for this they seek routes for foreigners who make them travel in vehicles under overcrowded conditions and little security through the states of the southeast, center and north of the country on their journey to USA.
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