MEXICO CITY>> Mexico’s National Guard fatally shot two Colombians and wounded four others in what the Defense Department claimed was a confrontation near the U.S. border.

Colombia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday that all of the victims were migrants who had been “caught in the crossfire.” It identified the dead as a 20-year-old man and a 37-year-old woman, and gave the number of Colombians wounded as five, not four. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

Mexico’s Defense Department, which controls the National Guard, did not respond to requests for comment Monday on whether the victims were migrants, but it said one Colombian who was not injured in the shootings was turned over to immigration officials.

If they were migrants, it would mark the second time in just more than a month that military forces in Mexico have opened fire on and killed migrants.

On Oct. 1, the day President Claudia Sheinbaum took office, soldiers opened fire on a truck, killing six migrants in the southern state of Chiapas. An 11-year-old girl from Egypt, her 18-year-old sister and a 17-year-old boy from El Salvador died in that shooting, along with people from Peru and Honduras.

The most recent shootings happened Saturday on a dirt road near Tecate, east of Otay Mesa on the California border, that is frequently used by Mexican migrant smugglers, the department said in a statement late Sunday.

The Defense Department said a militarized National Guard patrol came under fire after spotting two trucks in the area, which is near an informal border crossing and wind power generation plant known as La Rumorosa.

One truck sped off and escaped. The National Guard opened fire on the other truck, killing two Colombians and wounding four others. There was no immediate information on their conditions, and there were no reported casualties among the guardsmen involved.

One Colombian and one Mexican man were found and detained unharmed at the scene, and the departments said officers found a pistol and several magazines commonly used for assault rifles at the scene.

Colombians have sometimes been recruited as gunmen for Mexican drug cartels, which are also heavily involved in migrant smuggling. But the fact the survivor was turned over to immigration officials and that the Foreign Relations Department contacted the Colombian consulate suggests they were migrants.