At least 53 people were killed and 58 injured when a freight truck packed with more than 100 passengers flipped over and crashed into a bridge southern Mexico on Thursday.
Officials in the Mexican state of Chiapas said that most of the victims were migrants coming from Central America, particularly Honduras, meaning they were probably on their way to the US.
Luis Manuel García Moreno, head of the Chiapas Civil Protection Service, told Milenio TV that the truck had been travelling at excessive speed and then overturned on a steep bend, crashing into a pedestrian bridge.
Photos from the scene showed truck cab and its articulated trailer lying separately on the road, with more than a dozen bodies lined up in body bags or covered with plastic sheets.
The accident is already one of the deadliest involving migrants near the US border in decades, and the death toll could yet rise as some people are severely injured.
It happened about 125 miles north of Mexico’s border with Guatemala, a frequent crossing point for migrants seeking entry to the US from Central America and far beyond.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said: “I profoundly regret the tragedy caused by the overturning of a trailer carrying central American migrants in Chiapas. It is a great sorrow. I embrace the families of the victims.”
Guatemala’s president Alejandro Gianmettei said he would offer all necessary assistance, including the repatriation of bodies.
A record 1.7 million migrants from around the world, many fleeing gang violence, poverty, out of control Covid spread in their native countries, were caught trying to enter the US illegally in the 12 months ending in October, a record number after the lull of 2020.
Those coming from or through more southern states must pass through Mexico, usually with the aid of people smugglers who sometimes rob or extort them.
The Mexican government has hardened its enforcement of immigration laws, partly due to pressure from the US. Yet the authorities can also be a threat: in February, 12 Mexican police officers were arrested for the massacre of 13 Guatemalan migrants and six other people found inside a burned-out pickup truck 40 miles south of the US border.
Thursday’s accident came after Mexican authorities arrested 600 people being smuggled in two truck trailers through the state of Veracruz, coming not only from nearby countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua but from India, Ghana and Bangladesh.
