The Guatemalan government will declare three days of national mourning following the deaths of 55 illegal immigrants, mostly Guatemalans, in the crash of a truck loaded in Mexico, the Latin American Foreign Minister said on Friday. .
President Alejandro Yamatei “will announce (…) three days of national mourning and the flags will fly at half-mast,” the Guatemalan foreign minister told a news conference in front of a hospital in Tustla Gutierrez, southern Mexico, where ten people were being treated in hospital. accident.
“Right now, all of Guatemala is mourning,” he added.
Some 160 undocumented immigrants, mostly from Central American countries, were traveling in hiding, crammed into a truck trailer heading north to the U.S. border when the vehicle veered off course and overturned near the car. Tustla Gutierrez, the capital of the state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala.
According to the latest official report of the Mexican authorities, 55 people were killed and 105 were injured. They were mainly citizens of Guatemala, as well as Honduras, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Mexico itself.
Transporting trucks of migrants, mostly trying to reach the United States in the hope of finding a better life, being saved from gang violence and misery in their homelands, is a common method of traffickers.
Traditionally part of the migrant route north, Mexico has faced record migration flows this year, not only from countries such as Honduras and El Salvador, but also from Haiti.
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