Officials in Mexico’s violent southern state of Guerrero have said that they are looking into a horrific slaughter that occurred in a remote desert area where two criminal gangs are vying for dominance.
The state attorney general said late Saturday that upon arrival at Buenavista de los Hurtado on Friday, detectives discovered five charred remains piled on top of a burning car.
According to local media, 30 people were killed in a drone strike. This information was based on a video published on social media by persons claiming to be part of the Familia Michoacana and interviews with anonymous informants in the region.
Images captured in the desert show masked soldiers carrying assault rifles as they heap corpses, some of them shirtless, onto the bedpost and bedrail of a bullet-riddled red pickup truck.
It seemed like several of the guys had been dismembered, and one of them was without a head.
While one guy arranges a decapitated head above the human pile, another man, who is photographing the process from every angle, yells out to “send more.”
Although Reuters could not confirm the footage on its own, many regional outlets subsequently released viral videos showing what seemed to be the same truck beside scorched remains.
Authorities in Mexico acknowledged a “confrontation between the criminal factions of Familia Michoacana and Los Tlacos, who have a longstanding struggle for control of the territory” in a statement.
Investigators offered to accept complaints from victims’ relatives and conduct DNA testing to authenticate their identities, according to the state prosecutor’s office’s statement, but the offer was ignored.
According to the statement, interviews with locals did not reveal any evidence of other crimes, such as forced disappearances or injuries sustained in the incident.
The neighborhood is in the middle of a drug battle, and locals have been sounding the alarm about it for months.
