Mexico crash: 53 killed as truck smuggling migrants overturns, officials say
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By Michelle Ewing, Cox Media Group National Content Desk
TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico — At least 53 people are dead and 54 hurt after a cargo truck filled with migrants overturned and crashed in southern Mexico, authorities said.
According to The Associated Press, the rollover crash occurred Thursday in Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas state. As many as 200 migrants were believed to be in the trailer when it flipped and struck the bottom of a pedestrian bridge, the AP reported.
One of the survivors, Celso Pacheco of Guatemala, said most of the migrants were from Guatemala and Honduras, according to the AP. About eight to 10 young children were aboard the truck, he said.
Survivors told authorities that they boarded the truck in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, and paid from $2,500 to $3,500 to be taken to Mexico’s Puebla state, the AP reported. They then expected to meet up with another set of smugglers, who would transport them to the U.S. border, the migrants said.
“I deeply regret the tragedy caused by the overturning of a trailer in Chiapas carrying Central American migrants,” he tweeted in Spanish. “It is very painful. I embrace the families of the victims.”
“I deeply regret the tragedy in Chiapas state, and I express my solidarity for the victims’ families, to whom we will offer all the necessary consular assistance, including repatriation,” he wrote in Spanish.