Two men traveling from Central America were killed and eight others wounded Sunday after a group of armed men opened fire on the migrants because they refused to pay bribes to pass through a region of southern Mexico they control, according to local media.
The murders took place Sunday morning as a couple of large trucks carrying a total of 90 Central American migrants were held up by paramilitary forces in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, which sits on the Guatemala border.
Family members of the two Guatemalan victims told El Universal that the trucks had been driving through the town of Venustiano Carranza when men toting AK-47 rifles jumped out and “asked for money to be able to continue.”
The Mexican traffickers moving the dozens of migrants who each paid $7,000 to $8,000 to be smuggled into Mexico and to the U.S. refused to cooperate, and the armed men began shooting at the back of the trucks where the migrants were sitting.
One of the Mexican guides was among the wounded. Six other Guatemalans were among those hurt, including four minors.
The majority of those who were not hurt in the attack tried to get away from the trucks during the shooting. Some people surrendered to federal officers with Mexico’s National Institute of Migration and others chose to go back to Guatemala.
The group had left Guatemala last Friday.
The Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization-Carranza Region, a Mexican nongovernmental organization, said “paramilitary groups and criminals, who operate in the municipality of Venustiano Carranza” were responsible for the attack.
