At least 54 US-bound migrants died when the container truck they were in crashed in Mexico – with one official blaming the speed of the vehicle and the weight of its human cargo for the tragedy.
Dozens of bodies arranged in rows covered in white sheets were photographed laid across a roadway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas On Thursday. At least 54 further people were wounded, 21 seriously, in the horror smash.
The deceased were believed to be Central American migrants, some from Guatemala and Honduras.
As many as 200 migrants were packed in a cargo truck used to transport perishable goods that rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway, causing dozens of deaths and serious injuries.
The trailer broke open and spilled out migrants when the truck crashed on a sharp curve outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in the state of Chiapas, according to video footage of the aftermath and civil protection authorities.
It is one of the worst accidents to befall migrants risking their lives to reach the United States since the 2010 massacre of 72 migrants by the Zetas drug cartel in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
‘It took a bend, and because of the weight of us people inside, we all went with it,’ said a shocked-looking Guatemalan man sitting at the scene in footage broadcast on social media.
‘The trailer couldn’t handle the weight of people.’
The deceased were believed to be Central American migrants, some from Guatemala and Honduras, who were packed in a cargo truck
107 migrants were reportedly packed in a cargo truck used to transport perishable goods that rolled over and crashed into a pedestrian bridge over a highway
Dozens of bodies were arranged in rows covered in white sheets were photographed laid across a roadway in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas
Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals
Luis Manuel Moreno, the head of the Chiapas state civil defense office, said about 21 of the injured had serious wounds and were taken to local hospitals.
Moreno said the apparent cause of the tragedy was the speed at which the truck was going combined with the weight of the truck’s human cargo that may have caused it to tip over.
Moreno reported that some of the survivors said they were from the neighboring country of Guatemala, including survivor Celso Pacheco who said the truck felt like it was speeding and then seemed to lose control under the weight of the migrants inside, AP reported.
Pacheco estimated there were eight to 10 young children in the cargo truck and said he was trying to reach the United States, but now he expected to be deported to Guatemala.
The migrants inside the cargo trailer were flipped, tossed and crushed into a pile that mingled the living and the dead.
Volunteer rescuers hauled bodies off the pile by their arms and legs, while some migrants scrambled and limped to extract themselves from the twisted steel sheets of the collapsed container.
One young man, pinned in a heap of unmoving bodies, wriggled to free the lower half of his frame from the weight of the dead piled atop him, his face wrenched into a grimace of life extracting itself from the clutches of death.
A witness heard cries and sobs among survivors as emergency personnel rushed to the site of where the overturned truck shuddered to a halt by a highway footbridge.
Images showed a white trailer on its side, with injured people splayed out on tarps on the ground. There were also rows of what appeared to be bodies wrapped in white cloth.
Bodies covered in white sheets are line-up at the site of a trailer accident that left at least 54 people dead
Paramedics help a man injured at the site of a trailer accident and hold out a stretcher for him, as bodies are seen covered in white sheets in the background
The extent of the damage to the trailer of the truck caused by the crash is seen in this image
A video of the scene streamed on social media showed a woman holding a child wailing in her lap, both covered in blood. Another video showed a man curled up in pain inside the destroyed trailer, hardly moving as helpers pulled out bodies.
Men, women and children were among the dead, the Chiapas state government said, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Twitter expressed his sorrow at the ‘very painful’ incident.
Survivors said they boarded the truck in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, and paid between $2,500 and $3,500 to be transported to Mexico’s central state of Puebla.
According to survivors, once in Puebla they would presumably have contracted with another set of migrant smugglers to take them to the U.S. border.
He said that as the vehicle toppled over, it hit the base of a steel pedestrian bridge. There was a curve in the road near the accident scene that may have contributed to the crash.
That meant around 200 people were crowed into the vehicle, which is not an unusual amount for freight trucks to carry in migrant-smuggling operations in southern Mexico.
But according to rescue workers who first arrived at the scene, even more migrants had been aboard the truck when it crashed and some had even fled to avoid being detained by immigration agents.
One paramedic said some of those who fled into surrounding neighborhoods were bloodied or bruised, but still limped away in their desperation to escape.
Video footage showed the dead and injured migrants jumbled into a pile inside the collapsed freight container, with some struggling to extract themselves from the weight of bodies piled atop them.
Migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America typically trek through Mexico to reach the U.S. border, and sometimes cram into large trucks organized by smugglers in extremely dangerous conditions.
Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei posted his condolences for the families of those affected by the tragedy on Twitter.
‘I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas state, and I express my solidarity for the victims’ families, to whom we will offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriation,’ he wrote.
‘This shows us that irregular migration is not the best way,’ Kevin Lopez, a spokesman for Guatemala’s presidency, told Milenio television after the accident.
He did not know how many Guatemalan victims there were.
El Salvador’s foreign minister, Alexandra Hill, said her government was working to see if Salvadorans had died.
Mexico offered lodging and humanitarian visas to the survivors, and Chiapas Governor Escandon said those responsible for the accident would be held to account.
In recent months, Mexican authorities have tried to block migrants from walking in large groups toward the U.S. border, but the clandestine and illicit flow of migrant smuggling has continued.
In October, in one of the largest busts in recent memory, authorities in the northern border state of Tamaulipas found an 652 mainly Central American migrants jammed into a convoy of six freight trucks heading toward the U.S. border.
Irineo Mujica, an activist who is leading a march of a couple of hundred migrants who have been walking for more almost 1 1/2 months across southern Mexico, blamed Mexico’s policies of cracking down on migrant caravans for the disaster.
Mujica and his group had almost reached the outskirts of Mexico City on Thursday, after weeks of dealing with National Guard officers who tried to block the march. Mujica said the group would stop Thursday and offer prayers for the dead migrants.
‘These policies that kill us, that murder us, is what leads to this type of tragedy,’ Mujica said.
In fact, they are two very different groups. Caravans generally attract migrants who don’t have the thousands of dollars needed to pay migrant smugglers.
Migrants involved in serious accidents are often allowed to stay in Mexico at least temporarily because they are considered witnesses to and victims of a crime, and later Thursday Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said it would offer the humanitarian visas to the survivors.
The agency also said the Mexican government would help identify the dead and cover funeral costs or repatriation of their remains.
Mass deaths of migrants are something that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been desperate to avoid, even as his administration has accepted requests from the U.S. government to stem the flow of migrants moving north. ‘It is very painful,’ he wrote on his Twitter account.
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.
The journey north from Mexico’s border with Guatemala is perilous and expensive, and many migrants fall prey to criminal gangs en route. In January, 19 people, mostly migrants, were massacred with suspected police involvement in northern Mexico.
Record numbers of people have been arrested on the U.S.-Mexico border this year as migrants seek to capitalize on President Joe Biden’s pledge to pursue more humane immigration policies than his hardline predecessor, Donald Trump.
Mexican authorities in Chiapas have attempted to persuade migrants to not form caravans to walk thousands of miles to the U.S. border, and have begun transporting people from the southern city of Tapachula to other regions of the country.
The Biden administration has also urged migrants not to leave their homelands for the United States, and this week saw the restart of a policy initiated under Trump to send asylum seekers back to Mexico to await their court hearings.
Some critics argue that tougher policies push migrants into the hands of the human smugglers, putting their lives at risk.
‘(Authorities) generate smuggled migration that generates billions of dollars in profits,’ said migrant activist Ruben Figueroa.