By Agence France-Presse
The bodies of 11 people, including two women and two minors, were found abandoned in a pickup truck in a southern Mexican city plagued by criminal violence, authorities said Thursday.
The state prosecutor’s office said it had opened a murder investigation after the grisly discovery in Chilpancingo, whose mayor was beheaded last month less than a week after taking office.
The city is the capital of the southern state of Guerrero, which has endured years of bloodshed linked to turf wars between drug cartels.
Authorities said last week that they were investigating the suspected kidnapping of 17 people, including five minors, by drug traffickers in the same region, but it was not immediately clear if the two cases were linked.
The military has deployed troops to search for the missing persons, who are said to be traveling merchants.
The truck containing the bodies was found on a highway to Acapulco, the former beachside playground of the rich and famous now blighted by criminal violence.
The corpses had been dismembered, complicating efforts to identify them, according to a source at the prosecutor’s office who asked not to be named.
Last week, three other dismembered bodies were found in a vehicle in Chilpancingo.
Spiraling violence, much of it linked to drug trafficking and gangs, has seen more than 450,000 people murdered in Mexico since 2006.
The victims include Chilpancingo mayor Alejandro Arcos, whose gruesome killing in early October caused shock and anger.
Last year, 1,890 murders were recorded in Guerrero, which is home to drug production and trafficking routes, including through Pacific sea ports.
On Oct. 24, armed clashes between alleged criminals and security forces left 19 people dead, including two police officers, in the southern state.
And this Monday, gunmen killed five members of the same family in a suburb of Acapulco.
The northwestern cartel stronghold of Sinaloa has also seen a spike in violence since the July arrest of drug lord Ismael Zambada in the United States unleashed a wave of gang infighting.
Tackling the criminal violence that makes murder and kidnapping a daily occurrence in Mexico is among the major challenges facing President Claudia Sheinbaum.
The former Mexico City mayor, who became the country’s first woman president on Oct. 1, has ruled out declaring “war” on drug cartels.
Instead she has pledged to continue her predecessor’s strategy of using social policy to tackle crime at its roots, while also making better use of intelligence.