Witnesses recount horrors of Mexico crash that killed 54 migrants | Migration News

Most of the migrants killed when the truck they were crammed into overturned in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas were from Guatemala, officials have said, as witnesses recalled the horror of one of the worst roadside crashes involving migrants in Mexico in years.

A truck carrying an estimated 166 people crashed outside the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez on Thursday evening, killing 54 people and injuring 58 others, according to state officials in Chiapas.

Chiapas is a main transit point for migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach the United States.

Mexican authorities identified 95 Guatemalans among the people involved in the crash, as well as three people from the Dominican Republic, a Honduran, a Mexican and an Ecuadorian.

Footage aired on local media showed bodies draped in white sheets lining the roadside, and survivors bleeding or with broken bones crying out in pain.

“It was horrible to hear the wailing. I just thought about helping,” 18-year-old Sabina Lopez, who lives near the scene of the crash, told the AFP news agency.

Lopez, who lives in the El Refugio neighbourhood nearby, said she saw a man pleading with his wounded companion. “Don’t go to sleep, don’t close your eyes,” she recalled him saying. “Remember what you promised your mother! Hold on.”

Another resident, Isaias Diaz, who arrived 15 minutes after the crash, described a ghastly scene, with “a lot of people lying around, some of them were already dead”.

Diaz said he saw many people, including children, with injuries. “The crying, the pain, the desperation. It was a very ugly atmosphere,” he said.

Rescue workers who first arrived said they saw survivors fleeing for fear of being detained by immigration agents. One paramedic said some of those who hurried into surrounding neighbourhoods were bloodied or bruised but still limped away in their desperation to escape.

The incident comes amid rising tensions over the increasing number of migrants – most of whom are fleeing poverty, violence and instability in Central America – who have been travelling through Mexico in an attempt to reach the US border.

Many often cram inside large trucks organised by smugglers in dangerous conditions.

The Mexican National Institute of Migration said it is working to identify the dead, pay for funerals and help repatriate bodies [La Mira via Reuters]

Record numbers of people have sought to enter the US through its southern border with Mexico in recent months, in part due to hopes that US President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to pursue more humane immigration policies would mean more lenient border rules.

But the vast majority have been detained and expelled back to Mexico this year as Biden kept in place many of the hardline policies of his predecessor Donald Trump.

“Today is a sad day for the families of many people,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Thursday in a tweet in Spanish.

“The event that occurred today in Chiapas, Mexico exposes the risks that exist daily for thousands of people who seek a better life outside their communities of origin. We can do more for them.”

On Friday, the Mexican attorney general’s office said it would investigate the incident, and the National Institute of Migration said it was working to identify the dead, pay for funerals and help repatriate bodies. It said survivors would be allowed to stay in Mexico.

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also expressed his condolences.

“I deeply regret the tragedy caused by the overturning of a trailer in Chiapas carrying Central American migrants,” he said in a tweet. “It is very painful. I hug the families of the victims.”

Rescue workers who first arrived said they saw survivors fleeing for fear of being detained by immigration agents [La Mira via Reuters]

The driver, who fled the scene, appeared to have been speeding when he lost control on the highway connecting the town of Chiapa de Corzo with the state capital Tuxtla Gutierrez, officials said.

The crash is one of several recent incidents in which migrants and asylum seekers have been killed or injured while travelling through Mexico.

Last month, 12 migrants died when two trucks crashed and burned in Chiapas, while in January, 16 Guatemalans and three Mexicans were found burned to death inside a truck with 113 bullet holes in the state of Tamaulipas, which borders the US.

Twelve members of an elite Mexican police unit were arrested in connection with that massacre.

Meanwhile, lists of people being treated in hospital published on social media showed dozens of Guatemalan migrants among the survivors of Thursday’s crash.

An unidentified Guatemalan man interviewed at the scene said when the trunk driver tried to negotiate the bend, the weight of the people inside caused the vehicle to flip over. “The trailer couldn’t handle the weight of people,” he said.