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A caravan of Central American migrants still has over 1600 kilometres to walk before they reach the United States, but they briefly halted their journey to mourn a fellow traveller killed in a road accident.
Thousands of migrants spent Tuesday night in a makeshift encampment in the far southern Mexican town of Huixtla and are vowing to leave at daybreak for the town of Mapastepec, 60 kilometres up the coast.
Edwin Enrique Jimenez Flores, 48, of Tela, Honduras said he wants to reach the US to seek work.
“My feet are good,” he said.
A mobile medical clinic has offered medical treatments, while local council workers hand out food, water and rehydration liquids.
A candlelight memorial was also held in Huixtla for a Honduran man who died on Monday when he fell of the back of an overcrowded truck on a highway on Monday.
It comes as a migrant shelter in Guatemala City said another caravan of 1000 people has set out from Honduras before moving through Guatemala towards the Mexican border. Some local media put the number at more than 2000.
Such caravans have taken place regularly over the years, generally without great fanfare, but US President Donald Trump is seizing on the phenomenon this year making it a rallying call for his Republican base ahead of the November 6 midterm elections.
Trump has blamed Democrats for what he said were weak immigration laws and claimed – with no evidence – that MS-13 gang members and unknown “Middle Easterners” were hiding among the migrants.
The caravan, estimated to include more than 7,000 people, has advanced about 75km since crossing the border from Guatemala and still faces more than 1600km to the closest US border crossing at McAllen, Texas
Trump has criticised Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for not stopping people from leaving their countries and said in a tweet on Monday that the US would “now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the mbadive foreign aid routinely given to them.”
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