Brian McDonald
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that investigators are looking into the murders of four women and two children in central Mexico, where security videos show the presence of National Guard officers.
The murders occurred on Sunday in León, an industrial city in the state of Guanajuato where drug cartels have been fighting bloody turf battles for years.
The quasi-military National Guard has been López Obrador’s main force in combating organized crime, although the military has been implicated in a series of human rights violations that are tarnishing the Guard.
Guanajuato state governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez called for an investigation after security camera footage showed National Guard officers entering “a property without permission” before the alleged killers entered the same house.
The footage shows five National Guard officers in the neighborhood five minutes before the murders. The guards are seen crossing the street and entering the house wearing bulletproof equipment. They leave the house at approximately 9:17 pm carrying a large black bag. Five minutes later, a group of four men are seen arriving at the house where, shortly afterwards, residents heard gunshots.
MARIO ARMAS/AFP via Getty Images
According to local police, shell casings from several weapons were found in the house where the six people were killed. Authorities previously said the children killed were an eight-month-old baby and a two-year-old boy.
Two men survived because they saw the attackers coming and hid on the roof, Governor Rodriguez said.
The mayor of León, Jorge Jiménez Lona, said at a press conference that arrests had been made in the case, but did not give further details.
“We are investigating,” López Obrador said. “If Guard officers are found to be involved, they will be punished.”
“High number of murders” in Guanajuato
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.
The US State Department urges American to reconsider traveling to Guanajuato. “The high number of murders in the southern region of the state associated with cartel-related violence is particularly concerning,” the department said in a statement. travel advice.
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.
AFP contributed to this report.
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