Four people died in an accident between a truck carrying irregular migrants and a bus on a road in Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state (northeast), the National Institute for Migration (INM) said.
The accident happened Sunday morning near the town of Galeana, where INM personnel were working alongside the National Guard, civil protection and paramedics on rescue operations, the institute said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the bodies of three people traveling in the truck were discovered, only one of them had documents showing that he was from Honduras,” INM said.
The fourth dead man, of Mexican nationality, was a passenger on the bus, the statement said. Eight other migrants were injured, including six from Honduras, one from Ecuador and one from Cuba.
One of the injured, a 16-year-old Honduran minor, has been released and placed under the guardianship of the authorities, while the others are being given visitor’s cards on humanitarian grounds.
Transporting undocumented migrants by truck or bus is a common practice of “coyotes” — a nickname for smugglers. Despite their degrading conditions, these trips are expensive and, in addition to abuse and overcrowding, migrants are at risk of road accidents.
Last February, a bus carrying migrants crashed on a road between the states of Oaxaca (south) and Puebla (central), killing 17 and injuring 15 others.
In the same month, eight Guatemalans and one Honduran were killed in the accident involving the minibus that was transporting them in Nuevo León.