At least 40 migrants from South and Central America died in a fire on Monday night, apparently caused by a protest against deportations at a detention center for migrants in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez. country, officials said on Tuesday.
According to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, authorities believe the fire in the city opposite El Paso, Texas, started at 9:30 pm (local time) when some migrants set fire to mattresses in protest when they found out they were going to be deported. The president did not provide details on how so many people died in the incident.
“They didn’t think this would cause a terrible tragedy,” López Obrador told a news conference, noting that most of the immigrants at the facility were from Central America and Venezuela.
Of the victims, 28 were Guatemalan, according to Guatemala’s National Migration Institute, and 13 were Honduran, according to the country’s deputy foreign minister. It was not immediately clear why those totals differed from the death toll reported by Mexican authorities.
A Reuters witness at the scene saw, overnight, bodies lying on the ground in body bags behind a yellow security cordon, surrounded by emergency vehicles. The fire had already been put out.
In addition to the 40 dead, another 28 migrants were injured in the fire and were hospitalized, according to the National Institute of Migration of Mexico (INM). All were adult men, officials said.
It’s not clear how the fire was brought under control, whether there were emergency exits or what protocols authorities had in place to deal with the protests.
Source: CNN Brasil
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