'Death trap' Mexico must probe migrant attacks

Amnesty International warned Thursday of a "shocking spike" of violence against migrants in Mexico and urged authorities to investigate two separate attacks against 200 of them.

"Mexico has become a death trap for migrants, with vicious criminal gangs at every corner waiting for their opportunity to attack them for a few dollars," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, the human rights group's Americas director.

She said Mexican authorities are "more eager to deport people than to save lives."

Amnesty cited two recent cases in the northwestern state of Sonora, near the US border, and Veracruz in the east in which armed groups attacked more than 200 migrants, including children, leaving "several" dead.

An official in the federal prosecutor's office said the Sonora case is being investigated but that no probe was opened in Veracruz because nobody filed a complaint.

On June 2 in Sonora gunmen dressed in military gear opened fire on 120 migrants, most from Central America, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Three people were killed while 15 others, including 13 migrants, who had been kidnapped were rescued, the official said. Two burned vehicles were found at the scene.

Amnesty said the 13 migrants who were found by the authorities in the desert will be deported.

The rights group said the investigation has not produced any leads on who was responsible for the attacks and that many of the migrants remain missing, either lost in the desert or held by criminals.

Last Friday in Veracruz, men wielding shotguns and machetes robbed 100 migrants who were traveling on top of a freight trained dubbed "The Beast."

The assailants took their money and some of the migrants reached the town of Las Choapas, where they asked for help.

"They left us with nothing. We had to give everything before they would kill us, because they wanted to shoot at us or cut us up with their machetes," Alfredo Parras, a 27-year-old Honduran who survived, told AFP.

Amnesty said only 44 people were found and taken to government migration facilities. Five children were among the survivors along with a person with a bullet wound.

After a wave of unaccompanied child migrants flooded the US border last year, Mexican authorities launched an operation in its southern frontier to crack down on illegal crossings, leading to a rise in detentions and forcing migrants to hunt for new and riskier routes.