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MEXICO CITY - Six Central Americans who were headed to the United States illegally were crushed to death when dozens of other illegal immigrants and crates of bananas collapsed on them inside a truck in southern Mexico.
A wooden platform holding up some 100 people squeezed into the top half of the truck gave way and landed on those huddled underneath in the southern state of Oaxaca, Mexican media reported. Ten others were injured.
"I just heard a crunch and the people at the top landed on top of us," Salvadoran survivor Nelson Garcia, 35, told the daily Reforma.
On hearing screams, the driver pulled over and fled, survivors said. When police arrived, they found 170 people hiding in the truck, dozens of crates of bananas spilling out of it and six dead bodies.
A few dozen other illegal migrants had left the scene.
Thousands of Central Americans attempt the long and dangerous trek north to the United States every year, often hiding in freight trucks or trains, but accidents and killings by unscrupulous traffickers means many never reach the border.
Of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans attempting the US border crossing each year, scores die of exhaustion or dehydration in the scorching desert heat.
The truck had set off from the southern Mexican town of Ciudad Hidalgo, on the border with Guatemala, on Saturday night with some 300 people packed inside, Garcia said. It was headed for Tamaulipas, on the border with Texas.
Garcia said he had paid the traffickers 1,000 pesos ($127) for his passage and was due to pay more on arrival in Tamaulipas.
The truck made it through several police inspection points without its human cargo being discovered. The immigrants were mainly from Guatemala and El Salvador and included 52 women and seven children.
- REUTERS
