18 killed in weekend flare-ups

MEXICO CITY — Eleven men died in a gunfight in northern Mexico and at least seven people, including an opposition politician, have been killed in violence in the country’s southwest, authorities said yesterday.

State prosecutors in the northern border state of Chihuahua said a shootout between rival gangs killed 11 suspected gang members near the town of Guachochi in southwestern Chihuahua.

Drug gangs have resumed fighting for control of smuggling routes in northern Mexico, and Friday’s gunfight was one of the bloodiest in the area since violence scaled

The murder rate has fallen since President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in 2012, but turf wars continue.

to record heights in 2010 and 2011.

Separately, a series of clashes extending from Friday into Saturday involving students, police and armed men in the southwestern town of Iguala killed at least six people and left 20 injured, the government of Guerrero state said.

Local media said as many as eight people have been killed in Iguala, and the state government said 22 police officers had been arrested for investigation in the deaths.

Also in Guerrero, Braulio Zaragoza, the local secretary general of the opposition conservative National Action Party, was shot dead in the beach resort of Acapulco yesterday, a local government official said. The motive was unclear.

Zaragoza’s death came just days after the kidnapping and killing of a federal congressman for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party from the western state of Jalisco.

President Enrique Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 pledging to stamp out gang violence that has killed more than 90,000 people since 2007. But although the murder rate has fallen, parts of Mexico remain racked by bloody turf wars.