MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A bus carrying migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and Central America crashed in central Mexico, killing 17 people, officials in Puebla state said on Monday.
The accident occurred on a highway on Sunday afternoon as a bus with 45 passengers headed north, Puebla’s Interior Minister Julio Huerta told reporters.
“Fifteen people at the moment of the accident lost their lives,” he told a news conference. Another 15 were hospitalized, two of whom later died, he said. Five others remain in critical condition.
He did not specify how many of the dead and injured were migrants, and Mexico’s migration institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Migrants often take risky routes to transit Mexico on their way to the U.S. border.
Mexican media reported that the bus crashed when the driver lost control of the vehicle. Images published by television station Milenio showed parts of a bus crushed and mangled.
Last week, dozens of migrants were killed in Panama after the bus they were traveling in fell off a cliff, marking the worst migration accident in the country’s history.
(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon, Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Kylie Madry, editing by Deepa Babington)
