An election rally in northern Mexico descended into tragedy after a gust of wind sent the stage careening into the crowd on Wednesday night, killing at least nine people, including a child, authorities said.
International News
At Least Nine Dead As Stage Collapses At Mexico Election Rally
At least 50 other people were injured in the accident, some seriously, according to Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia.
Footage of the incident showed a chaotic scramble as people screamed and tried to leap away from the collapsing structure while the lights and a giant screen toppled onto the area where presidential candidate Jorge Alvarez Maynez and members of his Citizens’ Movement party were standing.
“I regret to report that so far the number of people killed in the accident stands at eight adults and one minor,” Governor Garcia wrote on social media platform X, adding that at least three people were undergoing surgery.
Speaking to the press from the scene of the accident in the town of San Pedro Garza Garcia, he described the accident as “a tragedy.”
Presidential longshot Maynez, who escaped without serious injury, said the stage collapsed after a strong gust of wind.
“I am fine and in communication with the authorities” over what happened, the 38-year-old wrote on X, adding that the priority was to take care of the victims.
Medical teams carted bodies on orange stretchers into waiting vans as soldiers roamed a field littered with debris and muddied campaign posters.
Rally attendee Jose Juan said he saw the structure come crashing down.
“It hit me on the head and I fainted. The rest was pure hysteria, pure panic,” he told broadcaster Televisa.
Citizen’s Movement member Javier Gonzalez-Alcantara told Televisa that first responders had to pull people trapped underneath the collapsed pavilion.
“All the people who were under the stage were rescued and the injured were taken to the hospitals,” he said.
Mexico’s meteorological service had warned of heavy rain, wind gusts of up to 70 kilometers (43 miles) per hour and possible tornadoes in Nuevo Leon and other northern states on Wednesday night.
Governor Garcia urged people to avoid going outside because of the storms.
‘Condolences and prayers’
The event was the closing campaign rally for Citizens’ Movement candidate for mayor of San Pedro Garza Garcia, Lorenia Canavati.
Candidates for the centrist party at the senate and local level also participated.
Presidential hopeful Maynez, who suspended his upcoming campaign events to remain in San Pedro Garza Garcia, said that he would stay at the scene until the last injured person was taken to the hospital.
Some members of his team were receiving medical treatment, he said, without specifying their injuries.
In a post on social media, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador offered his sympathies and said he was “sending a hug” to the family members and friends of the victims.
The other two presidential candidates also expressed solidarity with those affected.
Frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum said that she was canceling a rally planned for Thursday in Monterrey, and expressed “solidarity with the family and friends of the victims.”
Main opposition presidential candidate Xochitl Galvez offered “condolences and prayers” to the families of those killed and “wishes for a speedy recovery to all the injured.”
On June 2, Mexicans will vote for a new president as well as members of Congress, several state governors and local officials.
According to the polls, Maynez lags behind both Sheinbaum and Galvez, trailing at a distant third just weeks before the election.
The lead-up to election day has been marred by violence, with more than two dozen politicians killed since the electoral process began last September, according to research group Data Civica.
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday it had struck two naval cruise missile production facilities operating under Iran’s ministry of defence in Tehran.
“In recent days, the Israeli air force acting on IDF intelligence struck two key naval cruise missile production sites in Tehran,” the military said.
It said the facilities were used to “develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles, which are capable of rapidly destroying targets at sea and on land”.
The strikes “represent another step in deepening the damage done to the regime’s military production infrastructure”, the military added.
Last week, the military announced its fighter jets had struck several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including vessels equipped with anti-submarine missiles.
AFP
The number of migrants who died on the “Eastern Route” from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula doubled to a record high of 922 last year, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and neighbouring countries take the route across the Red Sea each year, mostly from Djibouti to Yemen, in search of work as labourers or domestic workers in wealthy Gulf countries.
“2025 was the deadliest year ever recorded on the Eastern migration route… with 922 people dead or missing — double the number from the previous year,” Tanja Pacifico, head of mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told AFP.
The majority of victims were from Ethiopia, the second most-populous country in Africa with more than 130 million people. It is plagued by multiple internal conflicts and deep poverty.
“IOM remains fully committed to working alongside the government of Djibouti to promote safe and dignified migration pathways, in order to prevent further tragedies,” said Pacifico.
Many migrants who cross the Red Sea find themselves stuck in Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, which has been embroiled in a civil war for nearly a decade, and some even choose to return.
Rapid economic growth in Ethiopia — estimated to reach around 10 percent in 2026 — could encourage less migration, IOM says, but that is mitigated by high inflation, also around 10 percent in February.
AFP
Denmark’s political parties began the thorny process of forming a government Wednesday, with the centrist Moderates as kingmaker after the prime minister’s Social Democrats scraped through a general election without a majority.
Danes were braced for a weeks-long process as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeks to consolidate power in the deeply splintered parliament after Tuesday’s snap vote.
A left-wing bloc made up of five parties, including Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, won 84 seats; the right-wing and far-right claimed 77; and the Moderates won 14 in the election.
The Social Democrats posted their worst election score since 1903—though they remained Denmark’s largest single party, with 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament.
Frederiksen formally tendered her coalition government’s resignation to King Frederik on Wednesday, telling a televised party leader debate she wanted to try to form a centre-left government.
“The most realistic scenario” would be a coalition with the five parties on the left and the centre-right Moderates, she said.
But it is not certain the Moderates, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would agree to that.
“I don’t believe that Denmark needs policies aligned with” the leftist Red-Green Alliance, Lokke said.
King Frederik was to meet party leaders individually later Wednesday to determine who should be asked to try to form the next government.
“My expectation is that Mette Frederiksen will become prime minister,” University of Copenhagen political science professor Rune Stubager told reporters.
“But I don’t know with the backing of which parties, like the left wing or the right wing,” he said.
He noted that Lokke, a two-time former prime minister, would likely vie for the position of prime minister, even though he has adamantly denied any interest in the job.
“Danes want me and not another prime minister. I still have the backing to be able to continue on behalf of the Danish people,” Frederiksen insisted during the debate.
Frederiksen has for the past four years headed an unprecedented left-right coalition made up of her Social Democrats, the Moderates and the Liberals.
The Liberals have refused to continue in a Social Democrat-led government.
‘Too Hard To Say’
Danes are now prepared for long negotiations. After the 2022 election, the talks lasted six weeks.
“It’s a long process, which means the government won’t be formed and it will be quite difficult to pass laws during this period,” lamented Jesper Dyrfjeld Christensen, a 54-year-old engineer.
“It’s really too hard to say who will be part of the coalition,” admitted Stubager.
With 12 parties in parliament, the political landscape is jagged — though Denmark is accustomed to minority governments.
“To some extent, this is the way Danish politics works. You have a minority government in the centre which forms a majority with the left on some issues and with the right on others,” he explained.
The negotiations are expected to focus on economic and pension issues, pollution and immigration, he said.
The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1 per cent of votes.
The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17 per cent, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades.
“If negotiations take place in the left-wing bloc with the moderates, then there will be more focus on green issues than on immigration,” Stubager said.
“But if, instead, the Moderates negotiate with the parties on the right, then the central issue will be immigration.”
Four seats in Denmark’s parliament are held by its two autonomous territories — two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands.
While the Faroese renewed the mandates of the two outgoing lawmakers, with one for each bloc, Greenland overwhelmingly backed the left-wing party and Naleraq, which advocates rapid independence from Denmark.
AFP
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