World Briefs CARAVANOF MIGRANTS MOVING TOWARD U.S.

About 2,000 migrants set out in a caravan from southern Mexico on Saturday in the hope of reaching the United States amid pressure from Washington to impede migrant arrivals that has made obtaining permission to pass through Mexico increasingly difficult.

Many of the migrants who departed from Tapachula early in the morning had been waylaid in the city just north of Guatemala for weeks or months, awaiting residency or transit papers from Mexican authorities.

The migrants are originally from Central America, Africa and the Caribbean. They left their home countries sometimes because of violence, or simply in search of a better life.

So far, Mexican authorities have not attempted to block the advance of the group, which by midday was trudging along a highway toward Arriaga under the supervision of human rights officials and federal police.

Hundreds of African migrants, in particular, have been stuck for months in Tapachula, where they say immigration authorities have stalled on giving them residency or transit papers. Almost all of them want to seek asylum in the United States, rather than stay in Mexico.

The migrants have engaged in scuffles with police at the Tapachula immigration offices in recent weeks. Mexico says they can stay in southern Mexico, or leave by the southern border, but the migrants want documents that will allow them to reach the northern border.

President Lenín Moreno ordered the army onto the streets of Ecuador’s capital Saturday after a week and a half of protests over fuel prices devolved into violent incidents, with masked protesters attacking a television station, newspaper and the national auditor’s office.

Moreno said the military-enforced curfew would begin at 3 p.m. local time in response to violence in areas previously untouched by the protests. Around 1 p.m., masked protesters broke into the national auditor’s office and set it ablaze, sending black smoke billowing across the central Quito park and cultural complex that have been the epicenter of the protests.

About two hours later, a group of several dozen masked men swarmed the offices of the private Teleamazonas television station in northern Quito, set fires on the grounds and tried to break into the building where about 20 employees were trapped.

A journalist with the newspaper El Comercio said the paper’s offices in southern Quito were under attack. The building’s security guards were seized and tied up, and attackers were trying to break into offices where journalists were hiding, the journalist said.