A group of 98 migrants were rescued from a US-bound truck that had been abandoned by its driver on the side of a road in eastern Mexico, just a month after 53 people were killed in San Antonio, Texas under similar conditions.
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The migrants were found overnight from Wednesday to Thursday on a road in the state of Veracruz, according to a police source.
“They said they were abandoned by the driver,” according to the police report, which does not specify the nationality of those found.
In addition to the 98 people rescued, around 100 escaped, according to witnesses quoted by the press.
A dozen people had to be hospitalized for bruises and problems with lack of oxygen. Others got out of the vehicle with backpacks, noted an AFP correspondent.
The tractor-trailer was heading up the Gulf of Mexico highway toward Nuevo Laredo, a town near the Mexico-Texas border.
On June 27, 56 migrants were found asphyxiated in an abandoned trailer near San Antonio.
On December 9, 56 migrants also died in a truck accident on a highway in the state of Chiapas, in southern Mexico. On Wednesday in Nicaragua, 16 migrants were killed and 47 injured in a bus accident.
In Chiapas these days, hundreds of migrants have blocked a road in front of the offices of the National Migration Institute to demand temporary residence permits allowing them to cross Mexico into the United States.
Since 2014, some 6,430 migrants have died or gone missing in Mexico on their way to the United States, according to the International Organization for Migration.
