Triple accident on Guatemala road kills eleven, including nine migrants

Eleven people, including nine migrants, were killed Saturday in a collision between a van, a motorcycle and a truck on a road in western Guatemala, authorities reported.

The accident happened early in the morning on a highway in the department of Suchitepequez, about 120 km from the Guatemalan capital.

“The initial version is that an agricultural vehicle (truck), where the migrants were traveling, collided with a motorcycle and a header (truck),” the Guatemalan migration organization said in a note sent to the media.

The truck was “transporting migrants, mostly Cubans,” he said, adding that those killed in the triple crash were two Guatemalans and nine migrants who were “passing through the territory (of Guatemala) on their journey to the United States.”

According to Migration, the dead include three foreign women. The deceased are Guatemalan truck and motorcycle drivers, he added.

Central America is a transit route for thousands of migrants from South America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia who march to the United States in search of a better life. More than half a million of these tourists, mostly Venezuelans, entered the Isthmus during 2023 by crossing the dangerous Darien jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama.

Nine people died at the scene of the accident and two others died after being rushed to a hospital in the city of Mazatenango, the capital of Suchitepequez department, according to Immigration. An injured foreigner is in Tequiset Hospital.

Oscar Sánchez, a spokesman for volunteer firefighters, said the accident occurred at 133 kilometers of the road that connects the Guatemalan capital to the Pacific Ocean.