Violent weekend in southern Mexico leaves 24 people dead

ACAPULCO: At least 24 people, some bearing signs of torture, were killed in a series of incidents over the weekend in Mexico’s violence-plagued southern state of Guerrero, officials have said. Faced with an uptick in bloodshed the state governor held an “urgent session” with army commanders and federal and state police in an effort to strengthen security in the region, the state’s security spokesman Roberto Alvarez told a Mexican television channel on Monday. “The bodies of nine males with visible signs of torture” were discovered on Sunday night on a road between the towns of Tixtla and Atliaca, in Guerrero’s central region, the state’s secretary of security said in a statement on Monday.

Agents at the local prosecutors office reported finding “four bodies tied at the feet and hands,” and noted that authorities also recovered five black plastic bags containing the remains of five more people. Those five bodies had been dismembered, with some of the body parts found outside the bags, a Tixtla police commander said, requesting anonymity for security reasons. Meanwhile, five more people were killed elsewhere in the state. Authorities are taking steps to identify the individuals. At least 10 additional people died in Guerrero’s Pacific resort of Acapulco during a weekend of bloodshed, including two members of the Navy, said Alvarez.

The southern state has suffered years of drug cartel violence as gangs grow marijuana and opium poppies in remote mountains and battle for control of heroin trafficking routes. Acapulco, once a glamorous getaway for Hollywood celebrities, is now considered Mexico’s murder capital, with 111 homicides per every 100,000 residents last year. In September, a top Guerrero police official and his female companion were stabbed to death in Acapulco.

More than 170,000 people have been killed and over 28,000 more have been reported missing in Mexico since the government launched an all-out military assault on drug trafficking in 2006, official data shows. It does not give the number of people killed by drug gangs and other organized crime.