MEXICO CITY: A bus carrying migrants overturned in southern Mexico on Friday, leaving at least 18 passengers dead and 27 injured, authorities said — the latest fatal road crash involving US-bound migrants.

The dead, three of them minors, were from Venezuela and Haiti, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office in Oaxaca state.

The accident happened at around dawn on a highway linking Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Puebla, it said. The injured were taken to hospital for treatment, it added.

Images released by state authorities showed the wreckage of the bus lying on its side on a highway winding through hills.

Thousands of migrants from different countries have been traveling across Mexico in buses, overcrowded trailers and atop freight trains in an attempt to reach the US-Mexican border.

More than 8,200 migrants have died or disappeared in the Americas since 2014, most of them while trying to reach the United States via Mexico, according to the International Organization for Migration.