(Culiacán) Mexican authorities are investigating the alleged kidnapping of at least 15 people on Friday in Culiacan, in the northwest of the country, an official source said.
According to local press, some 40 people were kidnapped during an attack carried out by heavily armed men in the capital of the state of Sinaloa (northwest).
The kidnappings reportedly took place in several houses in a popular neighborhood of Culiacan and were reported by witnesses calling an emergency number early Friday, said the state’s security chief, Gerardo Mérida.
Members of the police were deployed in the area to verify this information, he said, adding that at least five to seven minors were among those kidnapped.
“In total there are 15 people. This is the preliminary information we have,” said Mr. Mérida.
The armed kidnappers, hooded and dressed in black, arrived in vans and fired several shots into the air, according to a report from the State Security Secretariat, to which AFP had access. One of the people who called for help testified to having “heard the cries of the family calling for help”, according to the same source.
The abductees belong to seven families, according to local media.
This event comes the day after the death of three people during an armed clash in Badiraguato (northwest), hometown of the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a prison sentence in life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking and money laundering.
“We do not know if (the possible mass kidnapping) is linked” to the events in Badiraguato, commented the Security Secretariat.
With more than 450,000 assassinations and 100,000 disappearances since the launch in 2006 of a militarized offensive against drug traffickers, Mexico is one of the most violent countries in the world.