Agents
By Mark Stevenson | The Associated Press
8:28 AM EDT, June 13, 2008
MEXICO CITY - Armed men hijacked a bus carrying 33 Cubans and four
Central American migrants detained in southern Mexico after forcing
immigration agents away at gunpoint, officials said on Thursday.
A half-dozen assailants wearing masks and carrying guns blocked the
road, stopped the bus and forced the seven unarmed agents and two bus
drivers to get off, Mexico's National Immigration Institute said.
The hijacking occurred late Wednesday in the southern state of Chiapas.
None of the immigration agents or bus drivers were harmed.
``The armed men took off with the foreigners to an unknown
destination,'' the Immigration Institute said in a press statement.
An immigration official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said
the assailants threatened the agents with ``heavy caliber weapons.'' He
initially said 34 Cubans had been involved. The bus was later
discovered, empty near the jungle city of Ocosingo.
The Cubans had been detained June 5 on Mexico's Caribbean coast near Cancun.
Immigration officials said they did not know who carried out the attack,
or if they were immigrant smugglers seeking to recover their charges.
Migrant traffickers have sometimes been known to kidnap groups of
migrants from their rivals, and later ransom them off.
Cubans are increasingly traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S.,
instead of trying to get past U.S. Coast Guard patrols off Florida.
There have been violent incidents related to the smuggling of Cuban
migrants in the past: a suspected Cuban-American smuggler was shot and
seriously wounded in Mexico in December. But Wednesday's assault marked
the first case in recent memory that assailants targeted migrants who'd
already been detained by immigration authorities.
The seized Cubans and Central Americans were being taken to an
immigration processing center in the nearby city of Tapachula when the
attack occurred. Mexican immigration agents are normally unarmed on such
assignments.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flaworlddig06130sbjun13,0,5379941.story
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