Mexican authorities on Wednesday rescued a group of 31 migrants who were abducted while aboard a passenger bus from the company Senda on its route from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, to Matamoros, Tamaulipas.
The incident occurred on Saturday night when armed individuals in five vehicles intercepted the bus on a highway between Reynosa and Matamoros, forcing the driver and 36 passengers off the vehicle.
The attackers selectively targeted passengers believed to be migrants aiming to reach the border. The group included people from Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico.
Five passengers were allowed to continue their journey, and the remaining 31 were kidnapped. The incident was reported to the authorities by the driver of the bus, who called 911 at 7:26 p.m., according to Reuters.
This event unfolded along a highway that has witnessed increased violence due to an ongoing turf war between rival factions of a drug cartel.
The identity of the perpetrators or their motives have not been officially revealed, but Jesús Ramírez Cuevas, a spokesperson for the Mexican government, said the people rescued were undergoing medical attention.
Cuevas added that during the search phones were tracked, video footage from the bus was analyzed, and search-and-rescue dog operations were deployed.
Authorities told Reuters earlier this week that five individuals from this group had been recovered, but Jorge Cuellar, the spokesman at the security office of the state of Tamaulipas, said those five people had been kidnapped on Monday in a separate incident where a different bus that was heading to Matamoros was attacked.
Even though Tamaulipas is considered by the U.S. State Department to be the most dangerous Mexican state on the border with the U.S., the Mexican Government Security Department called this kind of kidnapping an “atypical” occurrence because of its large scale.
