International
Mexican authorities report 39 dead in fire at immigration center
March 28 |
A fire at a migrant detention center in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez left 39 dead and 29 injured, the National Migration Institute said in a statement Tuesday.
Images from the site showed rows of bodies under emergency blankets in front of the compound. Ambulances, firefighters and morgue vans were also seen.
The fire started Monday night at a Mexican immigration agency facility near the El Paso border, in a dormitory area where “68 adult men from Central and South America were being held,” the statement added.
The injured were transported “in serious condition to four local hospitals for immediate attention”.
Authorities were investigating the cause of the fire and called in the National Human Rights Commission, an official entity, to attend to the migrants.
They also began working with consular officials from several countries to identify the deceased.
“The National Migration Institute strongly rejects the acts that resulted in this tragedy,” the note added, without clarifying what actions it was referring to.
Migrant internment centers have been the scene of occasional protests and riots, especially at times of high migratory flow and when the detention facilities were more crowded. However, an incident as lethal as Monday night’s was not in recent memory.
According to the website of the NGO “Sin Fronteras”, which monitors Mexican immigration facilities, the Ciudad Juarez facility has a capacity for 60 people.
In October, Venezuelan migrants rioted inside an immigration center in Tijuana which had to be controlled by police and National Guard troops. In November, a similar situation occurred at the Tapachula detention center near the Guatemalan border. There were no deaths in either incident.
Ciudad Juarez is an important transit point for migrants arriving in the United States. Its shelters are full of migrants waiting for opportunities to cross or who have applied for asylum in the United States and are waiting for their cases to be processed.
In early March, more than 30 civil organizations and migrant shelters issued a statement denouncing the growing criminalization of foreigners in the city, as well as the existence of “arbitrary detentions where municipal agents question people’s immigration status, extort them, break their documentation and steal money and other belongings.”
The tension of those waiting in that town was felt a little more than two weeks ago when a group encouraged by false rumors that they could cross into the United States attempted to cross the border bridge en masse and was blocked by U.S. authorities.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
International
Seven inmates dead, 11 injured after violent riot in Veracruz prison
Seven inmates were killed and eleven others injured in a violent riot and clash inside a penitentiary in the Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.
The disturbance began on Saturday afternoon at the Social Reintegration Center in the port city of Tuxpan, in northern Veracruz, when inmates staged a protest over extortion and assaults allegedly carried out by members of the criminal group known as Grupo Sombra.
The protesting prisoners clashed with another group of inmates and set fires inside and outside the facility, seizing control of the prison for more than 12 hours.
During the takeover, the rioters released several videos, including one showing four prisoners —believed to be members of Grupo Sombra— accusing them of being behind the violence and extortion inside the prison.
It wasn’t until Sunday morning that elements of the Mexican Army, the National Guard, and local police forces managed to enter the prison and regain control. The state’s Public Security Secretariat confirmed that around 9:00 a.m. local time a coordinated operation restored full order and reestablished control of the facility.
Authorities also reported that the fires set by inmates were fully extinguished.
Official figures confirmed the “tragic” deaths of seven inmates and injuries to eleven people, who are now receiving medical treatment in various regional hospitals.
This is the second deadliest riot in Veracruz in the past eight years. In 2018, a violent uprising at the La Toma medium-security prison left seven people dead (six police officers and one unidentified man) and at least 22 injured (15 officers and seven inmates).
The riot follows the kidnapping and killing of retired teacher and taxi driver Irma Hernández, a case that shocked the entire country and was attributed to Grupo Sombra. Images of Hernández kneeling, surrounded by armed men in the municipality of Álamo, sparked nationwide outrage. She was murdered after refusing to pay extortion demands from the criminal organization.
Despite these incidents, Veracruz has not seen a spike in the daily homicide average. In fact, there has been a 1.6% decrease in homicides in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.
In 2023, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reported 3,094 incidents in Mexican prisons —an 18.5% increase from the previous year— resulting in 100 deaths and 892 injuries.
International
Study finds COVID-19 vaccines prevented 2.5 million deaths worldwide
COVID-19 vaccines prevented an estimated 2,533,000 deaths worldwide between 2020 and 2024, according to an international study led by Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Italy and Stanford University in the United States, published in the journal JAMA Health Forum. Researchers calculated that one death was prevented for every 5,400 doses administered.
The analysis also found that the vaccines saved 14.8 million years of life, equivalent to one year of life gained for every 900 doses given.
The study, coordinated by Professor Stefania Boccia, revealed that 82% of the lives saved were people vaccinated before becoming infected with the virus, and 57% of deaths avoided occurred during the Omicron wave. In addition, 90% of the beneficiaries were adults over 60 years old.
“This is the most comprehensive analysis to date, based on global data and fewer assumptions about the evolution of the pandemic,” explained Boccia and researcher Angelo Maria Pezzullo.
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