Fire in Ciudad Juárez is latest example of dangers facing those taking route to US from Latin America

At least 39 people have died and dozens been injured after a fire ripped through an immigration detention centre in Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican city on the US border.

Images of the aftermath showed dozens of lifeless bodies on the ground, some covered by silver thermal blankets. Television footage showed emergency workers attending to stunned survivors, who sat on white sheets gasping for breath.

Reports in the Mexican press suggested a large number of the victims were Venezuelan migrants, millions of whom have abandoned their economically devastated country in recent years in search of a better life.

Colombia’s consul in Mexico, Andrés Camilo Hernández Ramírez, said he was trying to verify whether citizens of his country had been affected by the fire, and would travel to the region if they had.

The newspaper El Universal said immigration officials had spent the hours before the fire, on Monday afternoon, rounding up Venezuelan migrants who had been begging for money on the streets of Ciudad Juárez, which is just over the US border from El Paso, Texas. Some of those migrants are believed to have been transported to the immigration centre where the fire broke out.

The toll of dead and injured was given by an official with Mexico’s national immigration institute, which runs the facility. No explanation has been given for the cause of the fire but in a cryptic statement the INM said it “energetically rejects the acts which resulted in this tragedy”. The agency did not explain the nature of those “acts”.

The INM said there were 68 adult men from Central and South America at the facility.

Ciudad Juárez is a popular crossing point for migrants entering the US. Its shelters a host migrants waiting for opportunities to cross or who have requested asylum in the US.

Mexico’s attorney general’s office has launched an inquiry and has investigators at the scene, according to media reports.

The local news website Norte Digital said several of the victims had been found in the bathrooms of the detention centre, where inmates are believed to have sought refuge from the flames.

The fire is the latest disaster this year to highlight the multitude of dangers facing the hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees who continue to flock to the US’s southern border each year after a perilous journey through South and Central America.

Last month at least 39 migrants died in a bus accident in Panama after trekking for days through the Central American country’s southern jungles on their way to the US.

The victims included citizens of Venezuela, Ecuador and Haiti. According to CNN Español the bodies of 13 victims – from Eritrea, Haiti and Nigeria – were buried by authorities last week after their families did not claim them.