DAVID, Panama — A total of 13 unidentified and unidentified bodies of the 37 migrants who died in the bus crash in Panama last February were buried Friday in the north of the country, near the border with Costa Rica where the tragedy occurred. The worst of its kind in the Central American country.
“At the moment, the official burial of 13 people is taking place, 5 people have been duly identified, Nigerian, Eritrean, Brazilian and Haitian,” police told reporters in Davide, Chiriqui province. Attorney General Melissa Isabel Navarro Rodriguez.
The prosecutor explained that “eight persons have not been duly identified (and) (included) in this group,” but noted that they are known to come from Cameroon, Ecuador, Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela.
He added that “three minors, two of them Ecuadorians and one child with Venezuelan nationality” remained in the morgue, all of whom were “identified”.
Panama’s Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences (IMELCF) reported that “the remains of the thirteen unidentified or unclaimed migrants” were buried in “an individual grave of duly registered bodies, facilitating exhumation when a body is claimed by relatives.”
“Humanitarian ports will be built in the future,” the forensic authorities said in a statement, as has already been done in the province of Darien, where the dangerous jungle is located on the border with Colombia, through which hundreds of migrants pass daily. their way to North America.
The burial, known as a state burial, took place in a cemetery in Daoud in the presence of Panamanian authorities, the Catholic Church, and a forensic consultant from the International Red Cross.
IMELCF General Director José Vicente Bachar announced that people who “have lost loved ones” and “know they might be here in Panama can come” to “make matches, and if they match, the remains will be handed over.””.
On February 15, a bus carrying 67 migrants from one shelter in Darien, on the dangerous border with Colombia, to another in Chiriqui, had an accident that killed 39 people, 37 migrants and two Panamanians, according to the latest official. This led to a decrease in the previous number of 40 deaths.
The public prosecutor said the bodies had been dismembered due to the violence of the incident, making identification difficult, but that the authorities were able to “identify 21 foreigners who were duly handed over to their relatives or embassies”.
Last year, 248,284 migrants crossed the Darien forest, an unprecedented number pushed by the Venezuelan exodus, while this year about 58,000 migrants passed through it, a number five times higher than the same period in 2022, according to official figures up to the first. March week.
Panama registers migrants who cross the deadly jungle – one of the most dangerous migration steps in the world – as they fall victim to accidents, thefts and diseases, and provides them with health care and food in shelters, where there is a presence of humanitarian organizations.
The migrants are then bussed, paying themselves, to another facility at the border with Costa Rica, to continue on to the United States.
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