MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico’s army said on Thursday that troops have found 49 migrants, including 11 children, who were kidnapped from a bus earlier this week.
Defence Secretary General Luis Cresencio Sandoval said 650 police and army troops were involved in the search for the migrants, who disappeared on Tuesday.
The last 33 of the migrants were found early on Thursday in an area where another mass kidnapping of migrants occurred in April. Sandoval said none of the abductors had been arrested, nor were two bus drivers found yet. The migrants said a drug cartel abducted them when their bus stopped at a gas station in northern Mexico.
Sandoval did not identify the cartel responsible for the kidnapping, but acknowledged the Gulf cartel and others gangs operate in the area, where the northern states of San Luis Potosi and Nuevo Leon meet. He also did not rule out the possibility that more migrants may be found, because there wasn’t a clear accounting of how many were on the bus to start with.
Sandoval said the biggest concern was to find the bus drivers. In past cases, drivers have sometimes been beaten or killed by kidnappers. In other cases, drivers have been found to be in league with the abductors. The migrants had been travelling north toward the United States border in a bus from the southern state of Chiapas on Tuesday when the vehicle, passengers and drivers were abducted.
Nine migrants were found on Tuesday near a highway in the state of Nuevo Leon; 40 more were found wandering roads or taking shelter in houses between Wednesday and early Thursday.
Sandoval said the migrants included 19 Hondurans, 14 Haitians, seven Venezuelans, six Salvadorans, two Brazilians and one Cuban.
Bus company officials first reported the abduction on Tuesday, and told local media they had received demands for USD1,500 apiece to release the migrants.
It was the second group of migrants to have disappeared in an area around the northern city of Matehuala.
That was the same area where about 20 people were abducted from vans in April. The April abduction led police to mount a massive search by air and land – and they found not only the 20 migrants they were looking for, but about 80 more migrants being held against their will, apparently by the same gang.
