(PatriotWise.com) — At least ten people were killed and 17 others injured after a freight truck carrying 27 Cuban migrants crashed on a southern Mexico highway near the Guatemala border on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.
According to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, all ten dead were women, including one under the age of 18. The driver of the truck, who was speeding at the time and lost control, fled the scene after the crash.
Officials from Chiapas state’s civil defense office confirmed that the crash occurred near the town of Pijijiapan.
An official with the Chiapas prosecutor’s office said the Cuban migrants had been hitching on the highway for rides on passing vehicles.
Authorities in Mexico prohibit migrants from riding buses without proper documents. Migrants who lack money to hire smugglers frequently hitchhike along the sides of highways, hoping to get a ride on passing trucks.
In another crash on Saturday, an Ecuadoran migrant was killed and ten others from Guatemala and Columbia were injured as they were being taken for processing aboard a Mexican immigration agency van.
According to the National Migration Institute, the van collided with a bus in the northern city of Mexicali, just south of the border from the California town of Calexico.
Meanwhile, two Mexican migrants were shot and killed and three others were wounded on Friday in a shooting on the Mexican side of the border, according to the National Migration Institute.
In Chiapas last Thursday, a dump truck carrying 52 migrants flipped over on the highway, killing two and injuring 27, including six children. According to the National Migration Institute, the injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were given legal asylum cards.
Two other Central American migrants were killed in the northern state of Coahuila last Wednesday after attempting to board a moving train.
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