11 bodies found on outskirts of Mexico City

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The bodies of 10 men and a woman who had been shot with high-powered rifles were found Friday piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, authorities said.

Another man was found alive and taken to a hospital, said Antonio Ortega, a spokesman for the Mexico State police. He said some of the bodies were blindfolded and had their hands tied.

State officials said police found another body nearby a few hours later but could not confirm it was related to the mass attack.

Ortega said he didn’t know if the victims were shot at the scene or dumped at the site in Valle de Chalco on the eastern edge of Mexico City.

Police did not tie the bodies to drug violence, but the nature of the crime — a mass attack with blindfolded victims — mimicked drug cartel tactics frequently seen in the frontier region along the U.S. border and in western states that are the bases of the major cartels.

The capital region has been largely spared the widespread drug violence that grips parts of Mexico. But some poorer areas of the sprawling metropolis of 20 million people have begun to see killings and decapitations committed by street gangs that are remnants of splintered drug cartels.

Authorities say the violence around Mexico City stems from an increasingly lucrative local drug market, with killings mostly related to fighting among rival low-level drug dealers. Drug consumption has grown dramatically in the past decade in the capital, health officials say.

Mass killings in Mexico City’s started late last year with a drive-by shooting in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Tepito that killed six youths.

Earlier this year, reputed local gang assassin Juan Vasconcelos allegedly went on a cocaine- and alcohol-fueled killing spree by orchestrating three mass attacks in less than two months, killing a total of 20 people. Police said Vasconcelos was the liaison in Mexico State, which includes Valle de Chalco and other impoverished suburbs that ring Mexico City, with La Familia cartel, a cult-like gang based in the neighboring state of Michoacan.

The homicide rate in Mexico’s capital is lower than in northern Mexican cities such as Ciudad Juarez, across El Paso, Texas, orCuliacan, capital of Sinaloa state, home of the powerful drug cartel of the same name.

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Tags: Health/ Food/ Diet, Mexico City, outskirts of Mexico City, World

Category: Health/ Food/ Diet, World