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A busload of about 50 migrants have been kidnapped by a gang in northern Mexico in the latest of a series of mass abductions, although 9 have been later discovered, Mexico’s president and police stated Wednesday.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated Nationwide Guard troops have been trying to find the migrants in an space across the northern metropolis of Matehuala. The migrants had been touring north towards the U.S. border in a bus from the southern state of Chiapas, when the car, passengers and drivers have been kidnapped.
“They’ve already discovered some,” López Obrador stated at his morning information briefing. “Initially, there have been studies of fifty,” he stated of the overall variety of victims, with out specifying what number of had been positioned. “We hope to rescue them,” he added.
9 migrants — six males and three ladies — have been discovered Tuesday close to a freeway within the state of Nuevo Leon, the state police division reported. Police didn’t say whether or not they had been freed or escaped. The migrants from Venezuela and Honduras have been discovered wandering in a rural space, asking for assist.
Bus firm officers first reported the kidnapping on Tuesday, and advised native media they’d obtained calls for for $1,500 apiece to launch the migrants.
Migrants stand on the Mexican facet of the U.S.-Mexico border, on the banks of the Rio Grande, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on March 29, 2023. (AP Picture/Fernando Llano, File)
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“Sadly, there are gangs that interact in kidnapping,” López Obrador stated, noting it was the identical space the place about 20 individuals have been kidnapped from vans in April. The April abduction led police to mount an enormous search by air and land — and so they discovered not solely the 20 migrants they have been searching for, however about 80 extra migrants being held towards their will, apparently by the identical gang.
The world the place the present search is underway is the place the northern states of San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon meet, and the place drug cartels have lengthy been energetic.
Related mass abductions have additionally occurred within the northern border state of Sonora.
In early Could, a authorities report stated over 2,000 migrants were kidnapped by smuggling gangs and drug cartels in 2022. Mexico’s nationwide immigration company stated authorities had freed 2,115 migrants of all nationalities kidnapped by gangs in 2022.
Gangs and cartels look like more and more charging migrants charges to cross Mexico, after which kidnapping them for ransom. There was a string of such mass migrant abductions in Mexico in latest months.
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