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Eleven people were killed in a shootout between police and a self-appointed “communal police” just outside of Acapulco, Mexico over the weekend, when members of the group opened fire on residents celebrating the Three Kings Catholic festival.
By the time more than 100 authorized National Police and army forces arrived on the scene, eight people were dead. State forces shot three militia members after resisting authorities at the scene, according to Roberto Alvarez, a Guerrero state security force member.
State authorities arrested 30 militia men and confiscated 580 sachets of marijuana, whose precise size is unreported, and seven illegally-possessed arms, according to state Attorney General Xavier Olea.
Another shootout between hitmen and police forces in San Jose del Cabo, Baja California, left seven people dead.
Between Thursday and Friday, the city of Ciudad Juarez in Mexico’s northern region saw 32 people violently killed in a territory dispute between two of Mexico’s most powerful organized crime rings: the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels.
These 2018 homicide statistics are following last year’s, which registered 23,101 killings between January and November alone. 2017 was the most violent year on record in Mexico in two decades.
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