5 migrants, including child, drown in 2 Mexico accidents

MEXICO CITY — Three Honduran migrants drowned off Mexico’s Gulf coast and four were still missing, the governor of the coastal state of Veracruz said Monday.

Four migrants, also Hondurans, were pulled alive from the ocean by rescuers after their 25-foot open boat apparently capsized off the coast. Gov. Cuitláhuac García wrote that one of those rescued was a boy age 12.

Garcia said a search was continuing for the missing migrants, including efforts by the Mexican navy.

In another incident, immigration officials said a migrant father and his 7-year-old son were found dead in the Suchiate River, which marks the border between Mexico and Guatemala.

Mexico’s national immigration instistute said the 36-year-old man and his son were from El Salvador. Their bodies will be turned over to El Salvador on Tuesday.

Migrants frequently wade, swim or take rafts and boats to cross the border river into Mexico during their attempts to reach the U.S. frontier.

Mexican officials have tightened border inspections along the Guatemalan border, but tens of thousands of Central Americans still make it across, often with the aid of smugglers.

The accidents were reported one day after four migrants died and at least 16 were injured in a traffic collision in a town not far from the Guatemala border. The migrants were being transported in the back of cargo truck in the township of San Juan Chamula, just north of the tourist city of San Cristobal de las Casas.

The prosecutor’s office did not identify the nationality of the dead men, but said the injured included nine people from Honduras, four from Guatemala, a Nicaraguan and an Ecuadorian, as well as one person whose nationality was not clear.

A much larger truck carrying migrants overturned on a highway near the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez in December, killing at least 56 people.