At least 10 female Cuban migrants have died after a truck they were travelling in crashed on a road in southern Mexico on Sunday, officials have said.
One of the women who died was under 18 and 17 other women were seriously injured in the crash on a highway near the town of Pijijiapan, close to the Guatemalan border, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said.
The driver, who was apparently speeding before losing control of the vehicle, fled after the crash, the institute said.
Pictures of the scene showed a freight truck tipped on its side, with the cargo section open, and the victims on the side of the road.
The truck was carrying 27 migrants at the time, officials said.
The women had been hitching rides on passing vehicles, according to an employee of the state prosecutor’s office.
Mexican authorities generally prohibit migrants without proper documents from riding on buses, so those without the money to hire smugglers often walk along the side of highways, hitching rides on passing trucks.
It was the latest in a series of incidents involving the deaths of migrants in Mexico amid a surge in people travelling toward the US border.
A migrant from Ecuador died and 10 others from Colombia and Guatemala were injured in a crash on Saturday in a van operated by Mexico’s immigration agency.
The vehicle collided with a bus in the city of Mexicali, the National Migration Institute said.
On Friday, two Mexican migrants were fatally shot on the Mexican side of the border and three others suffered gunshot wounds, the Migration Institute said.
Rescue services found a group of 14 Mexicans at dawn near Tecate.
On Thursday, an overcrowded truck, this time carrying 52 migrants, flipped over on the highway, killing two Central American migrants and injuring another 27, including six children.