News / Mexico

103 kidnapped migrants rescued outside Mexican capital

Thursday, 07 May 2015 7:18 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 07 May 2015 7:18 AM ]

This file photo shows Mexican federal police officers. (© AP)

Mexican police forces have freed more than a hundred migrants that were apparently kidnapped and held against their will in a house in the Latin American country’s central state of Mexico.

The State Citizen Security Commission reported that authorities were tipped off by a Guatemalan man, who managed to escape the house and alert security officials about the remaining 102 hostages.

Nearly 100 police officers swooped in on the home in the town of Axapusco, located 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of the capital, Mexico City, and rescued the victims, among them 14 children.

The rescued migrants are mainly from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, and some are said to come from India. Some of them had reportedly been held at the house for up to 35 days before being freed.

No details were immediately available regarding when or where the migrants had been kidnapped.

Police authorities have arrested a man along with five other suspects from Honduras and El Salvador in connection with the case.

The suspects had threatened to hand the victims over to criminal gangs if they did not give phone numbers to call family members to demand ransom.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute recently reported an eightfold increase in the number of the abduction of migrants between 2012 and 2014. The agency noted that as many as 697 undocumented foreigners were reported kidnapped only in 2014.

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