Three of the 10 minors between the ages of 4 and 11 who were injured in the accident of a bus with migrants that left at least 40 dead in Panama are still “in delicate condition” in the intensive care room, the Panamanian government reported Thursday.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) added that “affected minors who remain conscious and oriented are cared for by a multidisciplinary team and psychologists who provide support from various institutions together with translators from languages such as French and Portuguese.”
The 10 minors, 5 girls and 5 boys, are in the José Domingo de Obaldía Maternal and Child Hospital, located in David, capital of the province of Chiriquí, on the border with Costa Rica.
In another hospital in David there were 23 wounded, of which 12 were in serious condition in intensive care units, as reported by medical sources last night. This Thursday the information about his condition had not been updated.
The regional director of Health, Gladys Novoa, highlighted the response of the population to the call to donate blood, very “necessary due to the characteristics of the injuries suffered by the injured.”
“Not only children, there were also adults who were taken to an operating room for various trauma pathologies,” Novoa said in a statement.
The Panamanian authorities have not revealed the nationality, age or name of those killed or injured, which has generated claims from activists, although the Governments of Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador have recognized that there are nationals of those countries among them.
The deputy director of the National Migration Service, María Isabel Saravia, said last night at a press conference that “66 non-nationals” from Panama were traveling on the bus.
Saravia limited himself to informing that the list included African citizens and South American countries such as Brazil and Ecuador, and that the Panamanian Foreign Ministry is communicating with the different governments since many bodies were unrecognizable or dismembered.
For his part, heThe forensics of Panama said this Thursday that they require genetic information to identify the deceased, a process that “will take time”.
The incident occurred around 4:00 a.m. local time (9:00 GMT) in Gualaca, an area in the western province of Chiriquí, located about 450 kilometers from the Panamanian capital, near the border with Costa Rica.
Survivors and identification of their bodies
Meanwhile, the Government of Panama is working “hard” to identify the irregular migrants involved in a bus accident on Wednesday that left at least 41 people dead, including children, and several seriously injured.
A 7-year-old boy who was in critical condition in a hospital in the province of Chiriquí died this afternoon, the Public Ministry (MP, Prosecutor’s Office) confirmed to EFE. which raised to 41 the deaths in the accident, according to the figures of this judicial body.
The work to identify “all the deceased has not been completed, until now, due to the condition in which the bodies were left,” said a statement from the Panamanian Presidency.
The official letter indicated that “it has not been possible to verify the identity of all the survivors either because some (eight in total) are still unconscious in hospitals and lost their identity documents that were scattered at the scene.”
“The nationalities of the 66 migrants traveling on the BUS-5B-54 are: 22 from Ecuador, 16 from Haiti, 11 from Venezuela, 6 from Brazil, 5 from Colombia, 2 from Cameroon, 2 from Cuba, one from Nigeria and one from Eritrea. In total, 20 minors were traveling: 12 boys and 8 girls,” the government revealed in its statement.
He added that “of the total number of irregular migrants that were transported on this bus, 42 correspond to the male sex, and 24 to the female sex.”
This same Thursday the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences said that before “the state of the bodies and the lack of ante-mortem data” needed “information from the countries of origin of the migrants to obtain papilloscopic or dental records and samples from relatives for genetic comparison for identification purposes.”
The president of the Association of Foreign and Naturalized Residents of Panama (ARENA), Rafael Rodríguez, told EFE on Thursday that he was concerned about the fact that after “24 hours after the accident still” the name and the countries where the passengers of the accident bus were from were unknown.
He also criticized that the National Migration Service (SNM) of Panama “has not confirmed or denied” information from the Governments of Cuba, Colombia or Ecuador that there are nationals of those countries among the deceased and injured.
Investigations into what happened
The Public Ministry (MP, Prosecutor’s Office) continued this Thursday in Gualaca (Chiriqui) the place of the disaster located more than 450 kilometers from Panama City, collecting evidence as part of the investigation for the crime against life and personal integrity, said to EFE a source of the institution.
The bus was left without a roof, destroyed, with the seats scattered on the floor at the scene of the accident, a trunk road that leads to the Gualaca migrant shelter, the last point that irregular travelers touch in Panama before leaving for Costa Rica on the framework of the state operation “controlled flow”.
For reasons yet to be determined the bus driver, a Panamanian citizen who also died, lost control and fell into a ravine near the shelter.
The car would have collided with at least one fixed object and also with another bus parked on a hillside and where there were two people who were also injured, according to official data.