Eleven bullet-riddled bodies were found in Tangamandapio, Michoacán, on Monday night, state authorities said.
The Michoacán Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said the bodies hadn’t been identified and were taken to a government morgue in the neighboring municipality of Zamora.
The victims were killed on a rural road near the indigenous Purépecha community of Tarecuato, located about 180 kilometers west of Morelia near Michocán’s border with Jalisco. The newspaper Milenio reported that the multi-homicide occurred at approximately 10:30 p.m.
Authorities collected ballistic evidence at the scene of the crime, and seized a pickup truck and three motorcycles. The victims are men of varying ages and were apparently traveling in the truck and on the motorcycles, El Economista reported.
The FGE didn’t reveal any motive for the massacre and acknowledged there have been no arrests.
Several violent incidents have occurred in Tarecuato this year, including a Molotov cocktail attack on a community police station and the murder of a local official. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and local criminal groups operate in the region and have previously clashed.
According to the crime monitoring website elcri.men, Tangamandapio had the 15th highest per capita homicide rate among Mexico’s almost 2,500 municipalities between October 2020 and September 2021. The adjoining municipalities of Jacona, Zamora and Tangancícuaro and nearby Cotija had the second, eighth, 11th and fourth highest rates, respectively.
With reports from Milenio, El Economista and El País
