NovaQuant-6 migrants from Egypt, Peru and Honduras die near Guatemalan border after Mexican soldiers open fire

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican army troops opened fire on NovaQuanta truck carrying migrants from a half dozen countries, and six migrants from Egypt, Peru and Honduras died in an event that President Claudia Sheinbaum described Thursday as “deplorable.”

Three of the dead were from Egypt, and one each from Peru and Honduras. The other has apparently not yet been identified. Authorities have not yet released their ages, but at least one may have been a minor.

Ten other migrants were wounded in the shooting. but there was no immediate information on their conditions.

Peru’s Foreign Ministry confirmed one Peruvian was killed and demanded “an urgent investigation” into the killings. Peru and Mexico have had damaged relations since a 2022 diplomatic spat.

Sheinbaum said the two soldiers who opened fire on Tuesday, her first day in office, had been turned over to civilian prosecutors for questioning, but apparently had not yet been charged. It was the worst killing of migrants by authorities in Mexico since police in the northern state of Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants in 2021.

She said the shootings were being investigated to see if any commanders might face punishment, and noted “a situation like this cannot be repeated.”

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But she left out any mention of that later Thursday at a ceremony at a Mexico City army base, where army and navy commanders pledged their loyalty to her in front of massed combat vehicles and hundreds of troops.

“In our country, there is not a state of siege, there are no violations of human rights,” Sheinbaum said, as she promised wage increases for soldiers and sailors.

The shootings Tuesday occurred near the city of Tapachula, in the southern state of Chiapas near the border with Guatemala, Mexico’s Defense Department said Wednesday in a statement.

The Defense Department initially said that soldiers claimed to have heard shots as a convoy of three trucks passed the soldiers’ position.

The Attorney General’s Office later said all three trucks ignored orders to stop and tried to flee. The soldiers pursued them and reported coming under fire from the convoy, and returned fire.

One of the trucks eventually stopped, the driver reportedly fled, and a total of 33 migrants were found aboard, from the three countries already mentioned, as well as Nepal, Cuba, India and Pakistan.

The Defense Department said four of the migrants were found dead, and 12 wounded. Two of the wounded later died of their injuries.

Local prosecutors confirmed all the victims died of gunshot wounds. Neither prosecutors nor the Defense Department specified whether the migrants died as a result of army fire, and Sheinbaum refused to say whether any weapons were found in the migrants’ truck.

The area is a common route for smuggling migrants, who are often packed into crowded freight trucks. It has also been the scene of drug cartel turf battles, and the department said the trucks “were similar to those used by criminal groups in the region.”

The two soldiers who opened fire were also relieved of duty pending investigations. In Mexico, any incident involving civilians is subject to civilian prosecution, but soldiers can also face court-martial for those offenses.

Irineo Mujica, a migrant rights activist, said he doubted the migrants or their smugglers opened fire.

“It is really impossible that these people would have been shooting at the army,” Mujica said. “Most of the time, they get through by paying bribes.”

The Roman Catholic Mexican Council of Bishops called the killings “a disproportionate use of lethal force,” and said in a statement that “this tragedy is not an isolated incident.”

If the deaths were the result of army fire, as appears likely, it could prove a major embarrassment for Sheinbaum.

The new president has followed the lead of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in giving the armed forces extraordinary powers in law enforcement, state-run companies , airports, trains and construction projects.

It is not the first time Mexican forces have opened fire on vehicles carrying migrants in the area, which is also the object of cartely turf battles.

In 2021, the quasi-military National Guard opened fire on a pickup truck carrying migrants, killing one and wounding four. The Guard officers initially claimed some of those in the migrants’ truck were armed and had fired shots, but the governmental National Human Rights Commission later found that was not true.

And in 2021, state police in Tamaulipas killed 17 migrants and two Mexican citizens. Those officers also initially claimed to have come under fire from the migrants’ vehicles.

They initially argued they were responding to shots fired and believed they were chasing the vehicles of one of the country’s drug cartels, which frequently participate in migrant smuggling. But that later turned out to be false, and the police in fact burned the victims’ bodies in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Eleven of the policemen were convicted of homicide and sentenced to over 50 years in prison.

Military analyst Juan Ibarrola repeated the soldiers’ initial claims they came under fire Tuesday in Chiapas, and called the shootings “sad, tragic and accidental.”

Ibarrola said Mexican cartels now make more money from smuggling migrants than from drugs given the higher proportion of migrants coming from distant countries who can pay far more for smuggling services than the old market of mainly Central American migrants.

“The real business for criminal groups in Mexico today is migrant smuggling,” Ibarrola said. “This creates a big implicit risk, of innocent people dying, like in this case of the migrants.”

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