Christmas revelers slain in drug war

A group of armed men stormed a town in the mountains of the western state of Sinaloa on Christmas Eve and shot nine men to death with assault weapons, then dumped their bodies on a sports field as part of a war between Mexico’s two most powerful cartels, officials said Wednesday. Sinaloa state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera Gomez said the nine victims were eating Christmas dinner when gunmen entered the town of El Platanar de Los Ontiveros on foot, surrounded them and opened fire with assault rifles. They decapitated one victim with a machete and dumped the bodies on a field, Higuera Gomez said.