Baby, 7-Year-Old Girl among 6 Dead in Fresh Mexico Violence
A one-year-old baby and a seven-year-old girl were among six people shot dead in another day of violence in Mexico's troubled southern state of Guerrero, authorities said Tuesday.
At least one of the six victims in Monday's killing in the municipality of Chilapa was related to the town's former police chief, the state prosecutor's office said in a statement.
The latest murders left a death toll of at least 22 people killed in two days of violence in Guerrero, a region beset by drug crimes.
On Sunday, 12 people were killed when a shootout erupted during a cockfight in the town of Cuajinicuilapa. Four more were killed on a football field in an unrelated shooting in the resort of Acapulco on Sunday.
The state prosecutor's office had few details about the Chilapa attack and victims. But a senior state police official said the two children and three adults were fleeing in a taxi as gunmen pursued them.
The gunmen killed them and burned the taxi, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The prosecutor's office said one of the victims, who was not identified, was related to former Chilapa police chief Silvestre Carreto Gonzalez, who was sacked in July 2014.
"Among the victims we have a seven-year-old minor and another who was one, along with his mother and two other adults," the state police official said, adding that all five were related to Carreto Gonzalez.
Carreto Gonzalez's son was killed a week ago.
The sixth victim was found dead in another nearby location with AK-47 bullet wounds, the official said.
Chilapa has seen brutal violence in recent years as drug gangs battle for control of heroin trafficking routes in the region, which is a major grower of opium poppies.
At least 10 people disappeared from the town in May when a mysterious group of 300 armed men occupied Chilapa for several days, terrorizing the population.
Five of those missing shared the same last name as Carreto Gonzalez.
Two gangs, Los Rojos and Los Ardillos, have been fighting a bloody turf war in Chilapa.
The town is only 38 kilometers (23 miles) from Ayotzinapa, home to the teacher training college attended by 43 students who disappeared at the hands of corrupt police in another part of Guerrero last year.
Source: Agence France Presse
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