Mexican authorities recover 19 bodies from burnt out pickup truck

Mexican authorities are reportedly investigating after a burned-out truck was discovered in a region near the U.S. border containing more than a dozen bodies.

Reuters reported Sunday that the truck was discovered in a largely uninhabited part of Tamaulipas, in the country’s northeast. Nineteen bodies in total were discovered. A motive and the identities of the victims have not yet been determined.

“Preliminary investigations point to the fact that the cause of death were shots from firearms, and that then the bodies were set on fire,” read a statement from authorities in the region, according to Reuters.

“One of the lines of investigation is that the events could have happened at a place other than that of the discovery,” it continued.

The area of Tamaulipas where the truck was discovered is known to be a hotspot for cartel activities and trafficking of migrants.

Migrants traveling north in the hopes of entering the U.S. have faced violence in the region for years, exacerbated in part due to the so-called remain in Mexico policy pursued by the Trump administration.

A United Nations project tracking migration across Central and South America recorded nearly 500 deaths among migrant populations in the regions near the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019.