Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Tuesday that investigators are looking into the case murder of four women and two children in central Mexico, where surveillance video showed National Guard officers present.
The killings took place on Sunday in León, an industrial city in the state Guanajuato where drug cartels have been waging bloody battles for years.
The quasi-military National Guard is López Obrador’s main force in the fight against organized crime, although the military has been implicated in a series of human rights abuses affecting the Guard.
Guanajuato State Governor Diego Sinhue Rodríguez called for an investigation after security camera footage showed National Guard officers entering “a premises without authorization” before the alleged killers entered the same house.
The footage shows five National Guard officers nearby five minutes before the killings took place. The guards are seen crossing the street and entering the house wearing bulletproof equipment. They leave the house at approximately 9:17 PM with a large black bag. Five minutes later, a group of four men are seen arriving at the home, where residents heard gunshots shortly afterward.
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According to local police, shell casings from various weapons were found in the home where the six people died. Officials previously said the children killed 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, Governor Rodriguez said.
León Mayor Jorge Jiménez Lona said at a news conference that arrests had been made in the case, but gave no further details.
“We are conducting an investigation,” López Obrador said. “If any Guard officers are found to be involved, they will be punished.”
“High murder rate” in Guanajuato
Guanajuato is one of Mexico’s most violent states due to wars between rival cartels involved in drug trafficking, fuel theft and other crimes. In Guanajuato, with a population of just over 6 million, more police officers — about 60 — were shot in 2023 than in the entire United States.
In April there was a mayoral candidate shot dead in the street in Guanajuato just as she began campaigning. In December, 11 people were killed and another ten were injured in an attack on a pre-Christmas party in Guanajuato. A few days before, the bodies of five university students were found in a vehicle on a dirt road in the state.
For years the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel has waged a bloody battle with the Jalisco Cartel for control of Guanajuato.
The US State Department is urging Americans to reconsider their trip to Guanajuato. “Of particular concern is the high number of homicides in the southern region of the state linked to cartel-related violence,” the department said in a travel advisory.
Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since 2006, when the government deployed the military to combat drug trafficking, most of which were blamed on criminal gangs.
AFP contributed to this report.
