News / Mexico

Mexican tourists injured in Egypt return home

Friday, 18 September 2015 6:16 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 18 September 2015 6:16 PM ]

A Mexican woman who was wounded in an attack by the Egyptian army while traveling in Egypt is transferred from her return flight to a waiting helicopter at the presidential hangar of Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, Friday, September 18, 2015. (Photo by AP)

Six Mexican tourists who were injured in a recent air raid by the Egyptian military on their vehicles have returned home, amid calls on authorities in Cairo to provide a clear answer on the attack that mistakenly killed eight other people.

The five women and one man were brought back home Friday on a presidential plane earlier sent by Mexico before being lifted by a helicopter to a public hospital for further treatment.

Mexico’s Health Secretary Mercedes Juan Lopez said all the wounded had suffered burns, respiratory problems or fractures, but reiterated that they were all in stable conditions.

Egypt says the six and the eight others who were killed in the attack last Sunday had entered a restricted area in the western desert, and were targeted mistakenly as security forces were chasing militants who had abducted and beheaded an Egyptian.

Survivors have recounted that they were targeted by bombs dropped from planes and helicopters.

Juan said that the injured had no sign of bullet wounds on their bodies, adding that most of the injuries were from shrapnel.

Gretel Overjague Chavez, one of the Mexican tourists wounded in an Egyptian army air strike on the Western Desert that mistakenly killed eight of her compatriots, is lifted into an ambulance as she leaves a Cairo hospital for the airport, September 17, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

Accompanying the victims was the Foreign Relations Secretary Claudia Ruiz Massieu, who had flown to Cairo with some of the relatives of the victims three days earlier to demand an explanation from Egyptian authorities.

“We are determined to exhaust all available means to defend the rights of each of the 14 Mexican civilians who were affected,” said Ruiz Massieu, adding that all options are being reviewed by legal experts.

She said the bodies of the eight dead tourists will be repatriated “in the coming days.”

In an update to its travel advisory, Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department warned Mexicans to “reconsider or postpone their plans to travel to Egypt.”

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