Guwahati: A mayor, his father and 16 other people were dead after gunmen opened fire indiscriminately in the state of Guerrero in southern Mexico,as per the authorities.
Milenio television reported late on Wednesday that state attorney general Sanda Luz Valdovinos had claimed that 18 people had died and two more had been injured in the hamlet of San Miguel Totolapan.
She claimed that among the dead were the town’s current mayor, Conrado Mendoza, and his father, a former mayor. Images from the scene showed a civic hall covered in bullets.
A congressman was shot and killed in Cuernavaca city, south of Mexico City, later that day in the neighbouring state of Morelos.
The attacks occur at a time when President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s security plan is being heavily criticised and contested. He has attributed the majority of the blame for bringing down Mexico’s high levels of violence to the armed forces rather than the civilian police.
One of Mexico’s most violent regions is San Miguel Totolapan, a secluded hamlet in Tierra Caliente that is contested by numerous drug trafficking gangs.
In order to secure the release of other prisoners held by the local “Los Tequileros” gang, Totolapan residents kidnapped the mother of the gang boss in 2016.
State Deputy Gabriela Marn was tragically shot by two armed individuals on a motorbike in Cuernavaca as she got out of a car, according to Morelos State Attorney General Uriel Carmona.
Marn, a member of the Morelos Progress party, was reportedly assassinated at a pharmacy in Cuernavaca, according to local media. According to reports, the attack also injured someone who was with Marn.
Cuauhtémoc Blanco, the governor of Morelos, denounced the incident and announced via Twitter that security personnel had been sent to look for the perpetrators.
With the deaths of Mendoza and Marn, there have been eight state legislators and 18 mayors killed during López Obrador’s presidency, according to data from Etellekt Consultores.
This week, Mexico’s Congress is debating the president’s request to keep the military in charge of law enforcement until 2028. The effort by López Obrador to hand over leadership of the nominally civilian National Guard to the military was approved by lawmakers last month.