By Lizbeth Diaz and Stephanie Hamel
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican security forces have found the bodies of 19 men in the back of a truck, the local prosecutor’s office said on Monday evening, in a shootout between a Guatemalan criminal gang and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa cartel.
Five of the men showed gunshot wounds and were all found in the bed of a truck, wearing dark clothing, tactical vests and carrying firearm magazine clips, the prosecutor’s statement said.
The gruesome discovery in the southern state of Chiapas was made near the town of La Concordia, north of Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala.
A government security source in Chiapas told Reuters the victims were Guatemalan members of a criminal group fighting for territorial control of the area.
“It is a criminal group that wants to enter the area. They are Guatemalans and here they are facing different (criminal) cells, in this case from Sinaloa,” the source said.
Guatemala’s consulate in Chiapas is working to identify a number of victims. Four to seven bodies are believed to be from Guatemala, the Central American country’s foreign ministry told reporters.
The ministry says it is in contact with the Chiapas Public Prosecutor’s Office and will try to determine the nationalities of all victims.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador called the incident an “unfortunate confrontation” during his regular morning press conference on Tuesday, adding that the dead included both Mexicans and Guatemalans.
In recent years, Chiapas has increasingly become the scene of violent gang activity believed to be linked to criminal activities including drug and human trafficking.
“As a result of the increase in migrant trafficking in the area, the Sinaloa cartel, which previously controlled the drug trade there, has become very powerful,” the security source in Chiapas said.
(Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz and Stéphanie Hamel, additional reporting by Sofia Menchu; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Bill Berkrot)
