A new dramatic traffic accident involving migrants in Mexico left at least 18 people dead and 27 injured in the south of the country on Friday, all from Venezuela and Haiti, when the bus they were traveling in overturned. “The preliminary death toll of this traffic accident is 18 dead (two women, three minors and 13 men), all from Venezuela and Haiti,” said the attorney general of the state of Oaxaca in a press release, 27 injured.
The tragedy occurred around 5 a.m. local time (11 a.m. GMT) when the driver of the bus lost control of the vehicle, which overturned on a road between the cities of Oaxaca and Cuacnopalan in the neighboring state of Puebla (center), the prosecutor’s office said. According to the same source, the injured were transported to hospitals in the region.
Another accident five days ago
This tragedy comes just five days after another traffic accident in the southern state of Chiapas, in which ten Cuban migrants, including a minor, were crammed into a truck and died. A few days earlier, two migrants were killed and 27 others were injured in the same state when the truck carrying them overturned.
At the beginning of August, at least 18 people were killed and 23 others were injured when a bus plunged into a ravine in the west of the country. The vehicle was mainly transporting migrants. The worst accident occurred in December 2021, when 50 migrants crammed into the trailer of a truck died in the state of Chiapas. The truck was carrying a total of 160 migrants. Most of the victims came from Central America.
Many migrants cross Mexico illegally, crammed into buses, trucks and even freight trains, in very difficult conditions, to try to reach the United States. More than a thousand migrants arrived on a freight train in Ciudad Juárez on the border between Mexico and the United States on Tuesday after a roughly ten-day journey.