The death toll has climbed to 17 after a bus carrying 45 undocumented migrants overturned over the weekend on a highway in Mexico's southern Oaxaca state, authorities said Monday.  
 

Mexico City, February 21 (RHC)-- The death toll has climbed to 17 after a bus carrying 45 undocumented migrants overturned over the weekend on a highway in Mexico's southern Oaxaca state, authorities said Monday.   In Sunday's accident along the Cuacnopalan-Oaxaca highway, 15 passengers were pronounced dead at the site and two died later at hospital, the secretary of the Interior of central Puebla state, Julio Miguel Huerta, said at a press conference.

According to Huerta, another 15 passengers were taken to a nearby hospital to be treated, including five "in delicate condition," and eight were "about to be discharged."  The passengers were mainly Colombian, Venezuelan and Central American migrants, and "apparently all of them had no immigration documents," he said.  Local media said some of the migrants who survived unharmed fled the scene, as did the bus driver.

Members of the National Guard, Civil Protection agency and other emergency services from nearby towns in Puebla and Oaxaca, as well as Mexican immigration agents, attended the scene of the crash.

Many migrants seeking to reach the United States enter Mexico through Oaxaca and other southeast states.