Texas: 2 dead after 15 migrants found trapped in train

An anonymous emergency telephone call on Friday led authorities to halt a train that contained a group of "suffocating" migrants, two of whom were dead, police in Texas said.

The US Border Patrol stopped the train east of Knippa, a small community in southern Texas near the city of San Antonio, police said.

"Approximately 15 migrants were discovered to be in need of immediate medical attention, five of the immigrants were flown out to San Antonio area hospitals, five were transported to area hospitals, and their conditions are unknown," the statement by the Uvalde Police Department said.

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"Two of the immigrants were pronounced deceased."

Police said that Union Pacific, a freight-hauling railroad company, "will lead the investigation."

Temperatures near where the train was stopped reached 87 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in the late afternoon, according to KSAT.com, an affiliate of ABC TV in San Antonio.

Uvalde, where police received the 911 emergency call at 3:50 pm (2050 GMT), burst into the news 10 months ago with a mass elementary school shooting.

An 18-year-old former student at the school fatally shot 19 students and two teachers with an AR-15 assault-style rifle before police finally killed him.

It marked the third-deadliest school shooting in US history after a 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech and the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut.