Story by the Associated Press; curated by Dave Urbanski
CHONTALPA, Mexico (AP) — A notorious cargo train known as "the Beast" and carrying at least 250 Central American hitchhiking migrants derailed in a remote region of southern Mexico on Sunday, killing at least three people and injuring 20, authorities said.
The train company and rescue workers were bringing in two cranes to begin lifting the eight derailed cars overnight, and officials said it was possible they might find more victims under the wreckage.
Late Sunday, federal authorities lowered the death toll to three, but said two others had severe, life-threatening injuries. Tabasco state officials had said earlier that five people had died.
Police agents and rescue workers at a site where a train derailed in Tabasco, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013. An cargo train known as "The Beast," carrying at least 250 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. derailed in a remote region of southern Mexico on Sunday, killing five and injuring 16, authorities said. (Credit: AP)
Thousands of migrants ride the roofs of the train cars on their way north each year, braving brutal conditions for a chance at crossing into the United States.
The Tabasco state government said at least 250 Honduran migrants were on the train heading north from the Guatemala border. Heavy rains had loosened the earth beneath the tracks and shifted the rails, officials said.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo set up a call center for families to learn information about their loved ones.
The head of civil protection for Mexico's Interior Department, Luis Felipe Puente, released a list of 17 Hondurans ranging in ages from 19 to 54 who were taken to two regional hospitals. Six of them were in serious condition, according to the list he published on his official Twitter account. Puente said another Guatemalan was also wounded and the Central American nation's foreign ministry said two were injured.
The locomotive and first car did not derail and were used to move victims to the nearest hospital, in the neighboring state of Veracruz. Tabasco state Civil Protection chief Cesar Burelo Burelo said the accident happened at 3 a.m. in a marshy area surrounded by lakes and forest that is out of cellphone range.
Photo from Aug. 6 showing Central American immigrants riding north on top of a freight train near Juchitan, Mexico. Some of the immigrants are robbed and assaulted by gangs who control the train tops, while others fall asleep and tumble down, losing limbs or perishing under the wheels of the trains. Only a fraction of the immigrants who start the journey in Central America will traverse Mexico completely unscathed - and all before illegally entering the United States and facing the considerable U.S. border security apparatus designed to track, detain and deport them. (Credit: Getty Images)
The Red Cross said dozens of soldiers, marines and civilian emergency workers rushed to the area, which ambulances couldn't reach. Officials were trying to establish air or water links to the scene.
Honduran and Guatemalan diplomats traveled to the area to help identify victims and make sure the injured were getting needed medical attention, the nations' foreign officials said.
Mario Bustillos Borge, the Red Cross chief in Tabasco, described the rescue as a complex situation that was making it difficult to get rapid confirmation of the exact number of dead and injured.
"There are some very high estimates, and others that are more conservative," he told a local radio station, without providing details.
While the number of Mexicans heading to the U.S. has dropped dramatically, there has been a surge of Central Americans making the 1,000-mile northbound journey, fueled in large part by the rising violence brought to their homelands by the spread of Mexican drug cartels.
Other factors, experts say, are an easing in migration enforcement by Mexican authorities and a false perception that Mexican criminal gangs are not preying on migrants as much as they had been.
Central American migration remains small compared to the numbers of Mexicans still headed north, but steeply rising numbers speak starkly to the violence and poverty at home. The number of Hondurans deported by the U.S. government increased between to 32,000 last year from 24,000 in 2011. Authorities say it's hard to estimate the numbers crossing north.
U.S. border agents caught 99,013 non-Mexican migrants, mostly from Central America, in the fiscal year that ended Oct. 31, nearly double the same period a year earlier and the highest since 2006. The number of migrants actually making the trip is believed to be far higher.
Police agents work at a site where a train derailed in Tabasco, Mexico, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013, which carried at least 250 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. (Credit: AP)
The Red Cross said an undetermined number of people were trapped.
Tabasco state Civil Protection chief Cesar Burelo Burelo said the accident took place at 3 a.m. Sunday in an area surrounded by lakes and forest that is out of cell-phone range.
He said dozens of migrants were on the train heading north from the Guatemala border.
The federal government said 16 of the 35 injured were gravely hurt. Fifteen of the badly injured have been moved to the nearest hospital in the state of Veracruz, which borders Tabasco.
This is a breaking news story. Updates will be added.
--
[related]
