Mexican Catholic bishops condemn soldiers' killing of 6 migrants | World News

A group of Mexican Catholic bishops on Thursday condemned the killing of six migrants by Mexican soldiers in the south of the country two days earlier and called for an investigation into the incident.

On Tuesday, six migrants died and 10 were injured in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas after soldiers fired shots at the pickup truck in which they were traveling.

A statement from a migration-focused subgroup of the Mexican Bishops' Conference said the group “strongly rejects the disproportionate use of lethal force by state agents.”

“The Mexican state is obliged to conduct a serious, impartial and effective investigation,” the statement said.

The victims came from Egypt, El Salvador and Peru, said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

The deaths have raised further questions about the military's growing role in Mexico's policy toward migrants.

“This tragedy does not arise as an isolated event, but as a result of the militarization of migration policies and an increasing presence of armed forces on the country's southern border, which has been a constant,” the group of bishops said.

The U.S. is pushing Mexico to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the border, where record numbers of people have tried to cross in recent years fleeing economic hardship and violence.

“It is an unfortunate incident and it must be investigated and punished,” Sheinbaum said at a news conference Thursday morning.

She said the attorney general's office was investigating the incident, but did not say whether action had already been taken against the soldiers.

“Such a situation cannot happen again,” she added.

Mexico's Defense Ministry said soldiers opened fire after the pickup truck carrying 33 migrants tried to evade a military patrol.

The Defense Ministry said soldiers heard explosions before officers opened fire.

On Wednesday, Peru's foreign ministry condemned the killings in a statement that said the government would call on Mexican authorities to “conduct an urgent investigation to determine responsibilities for this reprehensible act.”

El Salvador's presidential office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Egyptian embassy in Mexico told Reuters it had no information on the incident.

A security crisis has deepened in the southern Mexican region near the Guatemalan border, where a territorial battle between powerful drug cartels has led to a sharp rise in violence over the last year.

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