Distressing moment at least 40 migrants are left to burn to death at Mexican ... trends now
A distressing video has captured the moment guards at a Mexican detention center leave at least 40 migrants to burn to death after they set mattresses ablaze to protest their deportations.
Officers can be seen running away from the closed cell containing inmates as it fills with flames and plumes of smoke in a clip which has been viewed around 1.4 million times.
The video was shared by Mexican journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga who described the situation as 'criminal.'
The blaze broke out at around 9.30pm on Monday local time at a center in the Mexican northern border city of Ciudad Juarez.
It was apparently caused by an inmate protest over deportations, officials said Tuesday.
A guard at the Detention center is seen running away from the closed cell as it fills with plumes of smoke and flames. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said nobody thought the protest would result in this 'terrible tragedy'
Mexico's National Migration Institute (INM) said that 40 male migrants from Central and South America died in the blaze while a further 28 were hospitalized.
However the Guatemalan and Honduran authorities counted 41 deaths between them.
Guatemala's national migration institute said 28 of their citizens were killed by the fire while the deputy foreign minister of Honduras said 13 were from his country.
It is not clear why the death toll figures differ.
Harrowing images released Tuesday showed dozens of body bags all lined up next to one another.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said authorities believed the blaze in the city opposite El Paso, Texas, broke out after some migrants set fire to mattresses in protest after discovering they would be deported.
He did not provide more details about how so many had died in the incident.
'They didn't think that would cause this terrible tragedy,' Lopez Obrador told a news conference, noting that most migrants at the facility were from Central America and Venezuela.
The fire, one of the deadliest to hit the country in years, occurred as the United States and Mexico are battling to cope with record levels of border crossings at their shared frontier.
At least 40 male migrants died in the blaze, Mexican authorities confirmed. Harrowing images showed the body bags of the deceased all lined up next to one another
Viangly Infante, a Venezuelan migrant, reacts outside an ambulance for her injured husband Eduard Caraballo while Mexican authorities and firefighters remove injured migrants
A witness at the scene overnight saw bodies laid out on the ground in body bags behind a yellow security cordon, surrounded by emergency vehicles. The fire had been extinguished.
It's not immediately clear how the fire was managed, if there were emergency exits or what protocols officials took to deal with protests.
Two migrants told Reuters that authorities had rounded up migrants off the streets of Ciudad Juarez on Monday and detained them in the center.
Alejandra Corona, a representative of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) which visits the facility once a week to monitor conditions, said it is split into two areas, one for men and one for women, each locked with a metal gate and supervised by a security guard.
The space is designed to hold about 100 people, she added.
'They put them into cells, and they don´t leave until they
