EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Authorities in Guerrero, Mexico, say they have found five charred bodies near the mountain town of Las Tunas.
Police also are investigating videos released Tuesday on social media purportedly showing members of a regional drug gang called Los Tlacos dragging into a pile and setting on fire the bodies of rivals from La Familia Michoacana transnational criminal organization.
“Following the release of videos on social media of an alleged confrontation between criminal groups [….] state police, forensic experts and members of the Mexican army visited Las Tunas to corroborate the facts,” the Guerrero Attorney General’s Office said in a statement. “There they found the calcinated bodies of five people.”
However, Mexican news reports have put the death toll at 17 and said not all of the bodies were burned.
The AG’s Office said the bodies have been sent to the medical examiner for examination and to identify them. A homicide investigation is ongoing and “immediate actions” will be taken to solve the case and assert the rule of law, the agency said.
The videos shared on social media show men in military fatigues hooting and hurling insults as they drag male bodies – some naked or half naked – onto a pile they later set on fire. One of the men can be seen kicking the cadavers. Later, another man is heard yelling, “Send me more (victims),” as he fires a rifle at the burning bodies and then at the ground. Others join in later as one shouts, “So they don’t come back to life!”
The massacre comes days after Roman Catholic bishops in Guerrero announced they had met with drug cartel leaders and attempted to negotiate a peace accord. Guerrero, part of a region in Mexico known as Tierra Caliente (The Hot Lands), for decades now has been a battleground for transnational criminal organizations and local gangs seeking control of various illicit activities and the growing of marijuana and opium poppies – from which heroin is produced, U.S. drug experts say.
The fighting has displaced thousands of rural residents who flee to large cities in Guerrero and Michoacan, and some end up bolting for the United States.
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