[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered the mornings of the week.
By Associated press
TAPANATEPEC, Mexico – Thousands of Central American migrants took a break on Sunday during their caravan's long trek in southern Mexico, while promising to head for the US border at around 1,000 miles.
Hundreds of other migrants tried to force their way into Mexico, on the border with Guatemala, and one was reportedly killed.
The new group of migrants, who called themselves a second caravan, clashed with the Guatemalan police force while forcing themselves to cross a gate on the border bridge of Tecun Uman, before fighting with Mexican officers. Volunteer firefighters said that dozens of people had been injured and that one man had died as a result of a serious head injury, apparently caused by a rubber bullet.
At the same time, about 300 Salvadorans have left San Salvador in the hope of going to the United States as a group.
Some of the migrants in the original caravan, currently estimated at 4,000, were sitting Sunday in the shade of tarpaulins stretched over the city square or collecting garbage in Tapanatepec, a city in southern Mexico, which has 7 500 inhabitants. Others got soaked in the nearby Novillero River.
Tensions caused by a long hike by overwhelming heat, as well as by fragile supplies of food and other goods, spread throughout the night from Saturday to Friday, when a dispute over a food product line escalated into disrepair. fight. Many in the caravan have been on the road for more than two weeks since the formation of the group in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
Raul Medina Melendez, security officer for the tiny municipality of the state of Oaxaca, said the city was distributing sandwiches and water to migrants camped on the central square on Saturday night when A man with a megaphone asked people to wait their turn.
Some launched insults at the man with the megaphone and then attacked him, said Medina. The police rescued the man while he was beaten and took him to the hospital for treatment, although his condition was not entirely clear.
On Sunday, several in the caravan took pickups to denounce the attack.
"Is this the way we will always behave?" Asked a woman from Honduras.
Others have complained that hikers smoke marijuana or have warned that images of garbage and uneaten food made them look disrespectful.
The group planned to travel Monday morning to Niltepec, 43 miles northwest of the state of Oaxaca.
The caravan has yet to travel 1,000 miles to reach the nearest US border crossing point in McAllen, Texas. The trip could be twice as long if the approximately 4,000 migrants were heading to the Tijuana-San Diego border, as had another caravan earlier this year. About 200 people from this group managed to get to the border.
Most of the migrants in the caravan appeared determined to reach the United States, despite offering refuge in Mexico.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday launched a program called "You're at Home", which promises shelter, medical care, education and jobs for Central Americans who agree to stay in Chiapas or Oaxaca in southern Mexico far from the US border.
The Mexican Ministry of the Interior said Saturday that temporary ID numbers had been assigned to 111 migrants, which would allow them to stay and work in Mexico. The ministry said that pregnant women, children and the elderly were among those who had joined the program and were now being cared for in shelters.
