Mexico truck accident: At least 54 killed as trailer capsizes
More than 150 people, including immigrants from Central America, say a truck trailer got stuck on its way to Chiapas State.
A resident hears a man pleading with his badly injured companion: “Remember what you promised your mother! Wait.”
The picture shows people scattered on the sidewalk of an overturned truck.
Sabina Lopez, who lived nearby after the crash and fled the scene, told AFP she had seen dozens of people screaming in agony, some trapped under rubble and others unconscious.
Lopez, 18, told AFP: “It was horrible to hear these cries. I just thought of helping.”
He said that due to the accident, the container broke in half and the roof burst.
Isaiah Diaz arrived 15 minutes after the accident and helped the paramedics by showing signs of life.
“I saw five, six children who were clearly injured. People with broken legs, ribs, [injured] heads, cut necks,” he told AFP.
“Crying, pain, frustration. It was a horrible scene,” he said.
Residents offered water and mobile phones to communicate with relatives of those who survived the crash. He added that the driver and one of his companions were found injured but later escaped.
Hours after the horrific accident and the site has been cleared of almost all evidence that something serious has happened here.
The only signs of widespread loss of life were burn marks and blood stains on the road and the remnants of some twisted metal crash barriers.
There are no police officers, no emergency services and no forensic investigators. Every few minutes the locals stop to add some flowers, a candle, a cross or, heartbreakingly, a bottle of water or a sports drink to the small temple.
It is a strong symbol of the difficult journey of immigrants, as many have walked kilometers through the heat of southern Mexico to reach the United States.
For these migrants, however, that journey was shortened before it began, being loaded into a narrow and dangerous situation behind a truck by human-traffickers. Many paid thousands of dollars for a trip that ended on this impeccably stretched road in Chiapas.
Yet this horrific loss of life – the worst one-day in Mexico since 2010 – will not be enough to deter many young people from trying to travel before the end of the year.
It is one of the deadliest accidents of its kind in Mexico. Forty-nine people were confirmed dead at the scene and five more died at the hospital, Chiapas Governor Rutilio Eskandon said.
He said 105 people were injured in the accident – 63 men and 22 women.
Millions of migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America cross the border into Mexico each year in an effort to reach the United States.
Many of them pay the smugglers, who illegally take them on long journeys in crowded and dangerous trucks.
Human rights groups have recently criticized the Biden administration for restoring the Trump-era border policy so that asylum seekers have to wait in Mexico to process claims. The policy means thousands of migrants are being forced to live in dangerous cities.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the US-Mexico border is the deadliest single crossing in the world. This year alone, at least 650 people have died trying to cross the border – more than any other year since IOM’s record began.
The IOM said in a statement that there had been a number of deaths on dangerous trips to the border, although these were difficult to document.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador described the crash as “extremely painful” and wrote on Twitter that he was “deeply sorry” for the tragedy.
At a news conference early Friday, Mr Lopez Obrador said the incident would be investigated and that it was working to raise awareness of the need to address the causes of migration through Mexico.
Mexico truck accident: At least 54 killed as trailer capsizes
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by News East India staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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