A group of 98 migrants were rescued from a US-bound truck abandoned by its driver on the side of a highway in eastern Mexico, just a month after 53 people died in similar conditions in San Antonio, Texas.
The migrants were found the night of Wednesday to Thursday on a highway in the state of Veracruz, according to a police source. “They said they were abandoned by the driver,” according to the police report, which does not specify the nationality of those found.
In addition to the 98 people rescued, a hundred would have escaped, according to witnesses quoted by the press. A dozen people had to be hospitalized for bruises and lack of oxygen. Others got out of the vehicle with backpacks, said an AFP correspondent.
The truck was traveling on the highway from the Gulf of Mexico to Nuevo Laredo, on the border with the United States and Texas.
6,000 migrants dead or missing in Mexico since 2014
On June 27, 53 migrants were found dead of suffocation in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio. On December 9, 56 migrants also died in a truck accident on a highway in Chiapas, in southern Mexico. On Wednesday in Nicaragua, 16 migrants were killed and 47 injured in a bus accident.
In Chiapas, hundreds of migrants have blocked a road in front of the offices of the Migration Institute these days to demand temporary residence permits that allow them to cross Mexico to the United States.
Since 2014, some 6,430 migrants have died or disappeared in Mexico on their way to the United States, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Source: BFM TV
