Troops confront US-bound migrant caravans

Guatemalan soldiers have blocked part of a caravan of as many as 9000 Honduran migrants seeking to reach the US border.

The soldiers, many wielding shields and sticks, formed ranks across a highway in Chiquimula, near the Honduras border, on Saturday to head off the procession of migrants.

Guatemala's immigration agency distributed a video showing a couple of hundred men scuffling with soldiers, pushing and running through their lines, even as troops held hundreds more back.

The country's President, Alejandro Giammattei, issued a statement calling on Honduran authorities "to contain the mass exit of its inhabitants".

On Friday, the migrants entered Guatemala by pushing past about 2000 police and soldiers posted at the border. Most entered without showing the negative coronavirus test that Guatemala requires.

"The government of Guatemala regrets this violation of national sovereignty and calls on the governments of Central America to take measures to avoid putting their inhabitants at risk amid the health emergency due to the pandemic," Giammattei's statement said.

Guatemala has set up almost a dozen control points on highways, and may start transferring migrants back to Honduras, as it has done before, arguing they pose a risk to themselves and others by travelling during the coronavirus pandemic.

Governments throughout the region have made it clear they will not let the caravan through.

Mexico continued to drill thousands of National Guard members and immigration agents on its southern border, in a show of force meant to to discourage the caravan from crossing into the country.

On Friday night, two groups of more than 3000 Honduran migrants each pushed their way into Guatemala without registering, part of a larger migrant caravan that had left the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula before dawn. A third group entered the country on Saturday.

The migrants are trying to cross Guatemala to reach Mexico, driven by deepening poverty and the hope of travelling on to the US border.

However, several previous attempts at forming caravans have been broken up by Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

"There's no choice" but to leave, said 25-year-old Oscar Zaldivar, a driver from Cofradia in northwest Honduras.

"You have to leave here, this country, because we're going to die here."

The International Committee of the Red Cross released a statement on Friday addressing the worsening humanitarian situation in Central America.

"The combination of COVID-19, social exclusion, violence and climate-related disasters that occur at the same time with a magnitude seldom seen before in Central America raises new humanitarian challenges," the statement said.