Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that investigators are looking into the killings of four women and two children in central Mexico, where security video shows National Guard officers were present.
The murders occurred Sunday in León, an industrial city in the state of Guanajuato where drug cartels have been fighting bloody turf battles for years.
The quasi-military National Guard has been López Obrador’s main force for battling organized crime, though the military has been implicated in a series of human rights abuses that are tainting the Guard.
Guanajuato state Gov. Diego Sinhue Rodríguez, called for an investigation after security camera footage showed National Guard officers entering “a property without permission” before the alleged killers entered the same home.
The footage shows five National Guard officers in the neighborhood five minutes before the killings took place. The guards are seen crossing the street and entering the home wearing bulletproof gear. They leave the home at approximately 9:17 p.m. carrying a large black bag. Five minutes later, a group of four men are seen arriving at the home where, shortly after, residents heard gunshots.
MARIO ARMAS/AFP via Getty Images
According to local police, shell casings from varying weapons were found in the house where the six people were killed. Officials said previously that the slain children were an eight-month-old baby and a two-year-old boy.
Two men survived because they saw the attackers coming and hid on the roof, Gov. Rodriguez said.
León Mayor Jorge Jiménez Lona, said at a press conference that arrests have been made in the case, but gave no further details.
“We’re investigating,” said López Obrador “If Guard officers are found to be involved, they will be punished.”
“High number of murders” in Guanajuato
Guanajuato is one of Mexico’s most violent states due to turf wars between rival cartels involved in drug trafficking, fuel theft and other crimes. In Guanajuato, with its population just over 6 million, more police were shot to death in 2023 – about 60 – than in all of the United States.
In April, a mayoral candidate was shot dead in the street in Guanajuato just as she began campaigning. In December, 11 people were killed and another dozen were wounded in an attack on a pre-Christmas party in Guanajuato. Just days before that, the bodies of five university students were found stuffed in a vehicle on a dirt road in the state.
For years, the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel has fought a bloody turf war with the Jalisco cartel for control of Guanajuato.
The U.S. State Department urges American to reconsider traveling to Guanajuato. “Of particular concern is the high number of murders in the southern region of the state associated with cartel-related violence,” the department says in a travel advisory.
Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since 2006, when the government deployed the military to fight drug trafficking, most of them blamed on criminal gangs.
AFP contributed to this report.