TEXAS, US
At least 46 people, believed
to be migrants, have been found dead in an abandoned lorry on the outskirts of
San Antonio, Texas.
A fire official said 16 people
including four children had also been taken to hospital.
The survivors were "hot
to the touch" and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.
San Antonio, which is 250km
(150 miles) from the US-Mexican border, is a major transit route for people
smugglers.
Human traffickers often use
lorries to transport undocumented migrants after meeting them in remote areas
once they have managed to cross into the United States.
"They had families...and
were likely trying to find a better life," San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg
said. "It's nothing short of a horrific, human tragedy."
Emergency responders initially
arrived at the scene at about 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) after responding to
reports of a dead body, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters.
"We're not supposed to
open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there. None of us come to work
imagining that," he said.
He added that the vehicle,
which had been abandoned by its driver, had no working air conditioning and
there was no drinking water inside it.
Mexico's Foreign Minister,
Marcelo Ebrard, said that two Guatemalans were among those taken to hospital.
The nationalities of the other victims was not immediately clear.
Three people are being held in
custody and the investigation has been handed over to federal agents.
Texas's Republican Governor
Greg Abbott blamed US President Joe Biden for the deaths, describing them as a
"result of his deadly open border policies".
Beto O'Rourke, the Democratic
candidate running against Mr Abbott, said the reports were devastating and
called for urgent action to "dismantle human smuggling rings and replace
them with expanded avenues for legal migration".
Immigration is a contentious
political issue in the United States, where in May a record numbers of
undocumented migrants were detained crossing into the country from Mexico -
many traveling along extremely risky and unsafe routes.
Fleeing poverty and violence
in Central America, many of the undocumented migrants end up paying huge sums
of cash to people smugglers to get them across the US border.
San Antonio's climate is hot
in the summer months with temperatures there reaching 39.4C (103F) on Monday.
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