 |
|
|
 News Around the Republic of Mexico | June 2007 
6 Migrants Killed In Mexico Truck Mishap
 Associated Press
| | 
| | One of the survivors said that there originally had been 300 people packed into the trailer.
(Mark in Mexico) |
Tons of bananas collapsed the false floor of a tractor-trailer smuggling migrants in southern Mexico, killing six people hidden inside a secret compartment and wounding a dozen others, officials said Monday.
About 200 Central American immigrants were hidden inside the compartment when it collapsed under the weight of the fruit Sunday in near Juchitan in Oaxaca state after a 10-hour trip that started at the Guatemalan border, Salvadoran Consul Nelson Cuellar said.
The victims includ110ed two Salvadorans and one Guatemalan. The rest have yet to be identified. About a dozen others — including Salvadorans, two Guatemalans and a Nicaraguan — were hospitalized with injuries.
The truck's driver fled the scene, and his assistant, Orlando Diaz, was arrested.
The migrants had paid between $5,000 and $7,000 to be smuggled from Central America, through Mexico and into the United States, Cuellar said.
Those who survived will be deported back to their home countries this week, state prosecutor Evencio Ramirez said.
Central American migrants often risk their lives traveling across Mexico in dangerous conditions on their route to the United States.
Last week, a man jumped to his death from a moving railway car and a boy had his leg cut off by the train's wheels as Mexican agents staged a sweep of undocumented migrants who had hopped the freight train in southern Mexico.
The number of undocumented migrants detained in Mexico rose from 138,061 in 2002 to 240,269 last year. Forty-two percent were Guatemalan, 33 percent Honduran and most of the rest Salvadoran. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us