Mexico Vows Inquiry After Soldiers Fire on U.S.-Bound Migrants, Killing Six
Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times, October 3, 2024
Mexican authorities vowed to investigate a deadly incident in which its soldiers opened fire on a truck carrying U.S.-bound migrants near the country’s southern border with Guatemala, killing six and injuring at least 10 others.
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The truck on Tuesday was carrying 33 migrants from various nations, including Egypt, Nepal, Cuba, India and Pakistan, according to a statement from the Mexican military.
The dead include three people from Egypt, one from Peru and one from Honduras, the Mexican attorney general’s office said. Investigators were still trying to determine the nationality of the sixth person killed, the attorney general’s office said.
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The sprawling state of Chiapas, which shares a long border with Guatemala, is a major transit corridor for migrants from around the world heading for U.S. territory — but also a zone traversed by smugglers ferrying arms, cocaine and other illicit substances.
Chiapas is also engulfed in a brutal turf war between Mexico’s two leading drug cartels {snip}
The Mexican attorney general’s office said in a statement it had sent a team to Chiapas to investigate. It said the incident occurred while a military unit was posted along a highway after having been alerted to “armed people” in the vicinity. Three vehicles ignored soldiers’ orders to stop, the attorney general’s office said, triggering a chase.
Soldiers opened fire after being “attacked,” the prosecutors’ office said {snip}
Two of the vehicles escaped, the attorney general said, while the third stopped and the driver fled the scene. Soldiers found the migrants inside.
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