Police commander, officer kidnapped and killed in Mexico

MEXICO CITY: The secondin-command of the police force of the violent Mexican city of Chilapa and another policeman were kidnapped and killed, authorities said Monday, less than a month after the police chief was murdered.

Isidro Casarrubias, the head of operations for the city’s municipal police, and Edilberto Santos, an officer on the force, disappeared on Saturday on their way to a law class they were taking in the nearby city of Chilpancingo, in the southern state of Guerrero.

Their bodies were found Sunday in an abandoned car near a bus station in Chilpancingo, the state capital, said state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez.

Mexican media reports said the pair had been dismembered and stuffed in black plastic bags.

“Their wives have identified the bodies,” Alvarez told a press conference.

Guerrero, the scene of running turf wars between rival drug cartels, registered more murders than any other state last year, in what was a record-setting year for homicides in Mexico.

There were 2,529 murders in Guerrero and more than 25,000 across Mexico in 2017, the worst year since the government began tracking nationwide homicide statistics. Chilapa is a frequent flashpoint in the violence.

The latest cop killings come after the police chief in Chilapa was shot dead during a religious festival on April 5.

Mexico is struggling to rein in violent crime that has surged since the government deployed the army to fight the country’s powerful drug cartels in 2006.

Since then, the country has registered more than 200,000 murders, though the statistics do not track how many are linked to organised crime. — AFP