Many bodies have been discovered in a truck on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. Some people were rescued alive by rescuers.
Watch Video 01:24
Truck dead in Texas
The The bodies of 46 people have been found in a truck on the outskirts of the city of San Antonio, Texas. According to the local fire department, 16 other people were found alive and taken to hospitals, including four children. Fire Chief Charles Hood said: “The patients that we saw were too hot to touch, they suffered from heat stroke.” There was no water in the trailer. It was a refrigerated truck, but no cooling system was running, Hood continued. On Monday, local measuring stations registered outside temperatures of almost 40 degrees Celsius with high humidity.
The victims are all are likely migrants who entered the US illegally. The Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the San Antonio-based consul was on his way to the site to find out if Mexican nationals were involved.
Three arrests
Security officials said three people were arrested in taken into custody. The trailer truck was abandoned in a remote area near railroad facilities.
Human traffickers have repeatedly used trucks to illegally bring Latin American migrants to the United States, sometimes raking in large sums of money for it. President Joe Biden took office with a promise to restore easier legal routes into the United States. At the end of 2021, however, he reinstated a regulation from the time of his predecessor Donald Trump, according to which asylum seekers in Mexico must wait for their application to be processed.
ehl/wa/se (dpa, ap, afp, rtr )