A baby and a young child were among six members of the same family murdered in a central state of Mexico Plagued by cartel-related violence, a local official said Monday.
Authorities say armed assailants broke into a home in the city of León, Guanajuato, on Sunday night and opened fire on the family.
“Unfortunately, two children and four women died,” state governor Diego Sinhué Rodríguez he told reporters.
Two men survived because they saw the attackers coming and hid on the roof, he said.
Guanajuato is one of the most violent states in Mexico due to territorial wars between rival cartels involved in drug trafficking, fuel theft and other crimes. In Guanajuato, with a population of just over 6 million, more police officers were shot to death in 2023 – about 60 – than in the entire United States.
In April, a candidate for mayor was shot dead in the street in Guanajuato as soon as she started the campaign. In December, 11 people were killed and another dozen were injured in an attack on a pre-Christmas party in Guanajuato. A few days before that, the bodies of five university students were found stuffed in a vehicle on a dirt road in the state.
For years, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel fought a bloody territorial war with the Jalisco cartel for control of Guanajuato.
Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since 2006, when the government mobilized the military to combat drug trafficking, most of them attributed to criminal gangs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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