The Oaxaca Attorney General’s Office (FGEO) has reported a preliminary toll of 16 people killed and 36 injured after a head-on collision between a bus and a truck near the Oaxaca-Puebla border early Tuesday.
The FGEO said in a statement that eight men, seven women and a girl were killed in the accident, which occurred on the Oaxaca-Cuacnopalan highway (Federal Highway 135D) at about 1:30 a.m. It said that the 36 people injured were taken to hospitals in the state of Puebla including the General Hospital of Tehuacán.
The bus left Oaxaca on Monday night and was transporting residents of that state as well as foreign migrants, the FGEO said.
It said that bus passengers reported “mechanical failures” and that they were “probably” the cause of the crash.
According to the Oaxaca government, at least 24 of those injured in the accident are Venezuelans, three of whom are children. As of 1 p.m. Mexico City time, authorities hadn’t released the names and nationalities of any of the people who died. It was unclear whether the drivers of the bus and truck were among the dead.
The accident came almost seven weeks after a bus crash in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca left a death toll of 29 people. Earlier this month, 18 people were killed when a bus veered off a highway in Nayarit and plunged into a ravine.
With reports from El Universal and El Financiero
