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David (Panama) (AFP) – Panama warned on Thursday that “it will take time” to identify the migrants killed in one of the worst bus accidents in its history, whose bodies were stored in a refrigerated truck after the capacity of the morgue collapsed.
Some 40 migrants died and about twenty were injured after the bus that was taking them to the border with Costa Rica left the route early Wednesday morning in Gualaca, Chiriquí province, some 400 km west of Panama City. The Panamanian driver also lost his life in the accident.
The bus transported foreigners from Darién, the dangerous jungle that limits to the south with Colombiato a shelter that would host them in that town in western Panama, before resuming their trip without a visa to the United States.
In the vehicle, part of the fleet organized by the government to try to channel the migratory flow, there were 66 foreigners and two drivers, one of whom died.
The vehicle had an accident when it lost control in a curve and hit a rock and another vehicle very close to the shelter, after almost 14 hours of travel to cover nearly 700 kilometers.
Missing data
However, the authorities have given different versions of the death toll.
“As we already know, the number of deaths amounts to 40 foreign citizens,” Juan García, adviser to the National Migration Service, told the Telemetro channel.
“On this trip there were foreign citizens of Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, Haitian, Cuban nationality,” he added.
However, the prosecution considers that due to the state of the bodies, an exact figure cannot yet be given.
“This process will take time, (…) the state of the bodies and the lack of ante-mortem data make expert reports difficult, especially with regard to identification,” the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said in a statement. dependent on the prosecution.
“Information from the migrants’ countries of origin will be needed,” such as fingerprint and dental records and DNA samples from relatives “for genetic comparisons,” added the Institute of Legal Medicine.
“We cannot give an exact precision of the number of fatalities because there is a very complex situation and that is that there are dismemberments” of the bodies of some of the deceased, said the superior prosecutor of Chiriquí, Melissa Navarro, in a statement sent to AFP through from the press office.
“We as a public ministry have talked about the removal of 37 remains so far,” added Navarro.
The Panamanian government has not specified the nationality of the deceased or the injured.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reported on Twitter that “Cuban citizens” were among the dead.
Colombia and Ecuador also confirmed the death of several of their compatriots.
refrigerator truck
The accident also left more than 20 injured who were taken to hospitals in David, capital of the province of Chiriquí, while the dead were taken to the judicial morgue in the same city.
A refrigerated truck arrived at the morgue on Thursday to store the bodies, because its capacity has collapsed and the identification task will be long.
“The corpses will be preserved with the due dignity established by international standards,” said the Institute of Legal Medicine.
The Red Cross of Panama, which donated mortuary bags to David’s morgue, reported that it is trying to contact relatives of the victims and injured.
“We are in actions to restore family contact so that relatives abroad can learn about their loved ones,” Leo Dan Berrios, regional director of the Red Cross for the Panamanian provinces of Chiriquí, Veraguas and Bocas del Rey, told reporters. Bull.
The dangerous jungle of the Darien has become a corridor for irregular migration traveling from South America to the United States via Central America. On their journey, migrants must face wild animals, mighty rivers, and criminal groups.
According to official data, in 2022, 248,000 people crossed the Darién, most of them Venezuelans. This year 37,000 migrants have already crossed it, a fifth of them children.
