Vehicles carrying Latin Americans trying to enter the United States illegally were shot at in the desert near the border city of Mexicali, leaving eight of the migrants wounded, newspapers reported Saturday.
The sport-utility vehicles were carrying 23 people when the firing began Friday, the Baja California newspapers El Mexicano and Frontera said.
The papers said the immigrant smugglers–possibly traveling in two vehicles–had been seen by U.S. officials as they were trying to cross into the United States.
The vehicles then turned around and headed back into Mexico, where they were challenged by a Mexican army patrol, the newspapers said.
The drivers reportedly refused to stop and may have fired at the army patrol, sparking the gunfight, the reports said.
One vehicle apparently escaped while the other crossed again into the United States, where the two most seriously wounded victims were listed in stable condition at a San Diego hospital.
The 23 people inside the vehicles included six women and one child. Seventeen were from El Salvador, one from Ecuador and five from Mexico.
A spokeswoman for Mexico’s Defense Secretariat said she had no information on the claim by at least one of the victims that soldiers fired at the vehicles.
