Five young men were found dead on Sunday inside a vehicle abandoned on a dirt road near the Celaya-Salvatierra campus of the University of Guanajuato.

The Milenio newspaper reported Monday that the deceased were students at the Universidad Latina de México, which is located in Celaya.

Residents of the Crespo neighborhood in Celaya reported the presence of a vehicle containing dead bodies on Sunday evening.

National Guard officers subsequently located the men, who reportedly had gunshot wounds to their heads and other signs of violence on their bodies. The victims – aged 25 to 30, according to Milenio – were taken to a government morgue in Guanajuato city.

Citing unnamed sources, Milenio reported that the men were medical students.

The Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office (FGE) said on the X social media platform that it had begun an investigation and was seeking to identify and apprehend the culprits.

It said that “various pieces of evidence” were collected at the location where the bodies were found and that they are being analyzed in forensic laboratories.

Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez Vallejo said he had given instructions to state security authorities to “implement an exhaustive operation with the support of federal and municipal authorities to reinforce security in the region and arrest the culprits as soon as possible.”

He also said that state government secretary Jesús Oviedo had been instructed to maintain close contact with the families of the victims and provide them with all the support they require.

Guanajuato has been Mexico’s most violent state in recent years in terms of homicides. The state recorded 2,668 murders in the first 10 months of the year, according to federal government data.

Violence in Guanajuato – where rival criminal groups are vying for control – is concentrated in a relatively small number of municipalities including Celaya.

On a per capita basis, Celaya was the 38th most violent municipality in Mexico in the 12 months to the end of October with 71.2 homicides per 100,000 people, according to the crime statistics website elcri.men.

With reports from El Universal and Milenio