Pueblo Nuevo, Durango - Ten children, youths and young adults between the ages of 8 and 21 were gunned down, presumably by drug traffickers, in the northern Mexican state of Durango, the state's attorney general said Monday.
The incident happened Sunday on a road near the town of Pueblo Nuevo in southern Durango.
Attorney General Daniel Garcia Leal said that unknown gunmen who had set up a fake checkpoint on the road shot and even threw grenades at the victims, the state-run Notimex news agency reported.
The victims were in a pickup truck, returning to their homes after having traveled to pick up money to support their school as part of a government social program, Garcia Leal said.
The gunmen motioned the truck to stop but the victims, out of fear of being robbed or assaulted, did not comply, the attorney general said.
According to official reports the multiple executions included the deaths of Yolanda (19), Ivan (17), Erika (11) and Margarita (13), all siblings with the last name of Ortega Rueda.Also slain were Juana (8), Francisca (8) and Yesenia (15), all siblings with the last name of Sarabia Mancinas.
Other of the young people executed with AK-47's (cuernos de chivo) and fragmentation grenades weree Sergio González Leyva, 16 years old, Carlos Ramírez Leyva, 15, and brothers Peter (21) and Lazaro Leyva Cabrera (19).
No arrests had been made in the incident, which is the latest in which children have found themselves caught in the middle of the country's violent drug wars.
In January, in a case of mistaken identity, 15 people, mostly teenagers, were killed when gunmen attacked a house party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
In the last two years members of organize crime tied to drug trafficking have been setting up roadblock checkpoints where they stop people who are travelling in the roads of the mountain villages located in remote areas of the municipal town of Pueblo Nuevo.
According to statements from witnesses at the scenes when they get stopped during these phony checkpoints and are asked to turn over the cell phones and documents. They get asked where they are going and are usually sent on their way.
In this mountain river south of the state capital, last year there were multiple executions from confrontations between drug traffickers, who during the confrontations burn late model vehicles using fragmentation grenades.
A brother of the mayor of Pueblo Nuevo, PAN member Daniel Delgado Meraz, who was a former municipal police, was executed in that river a month ago, and his body was found near the Rosilla dam.
Video on the incident:
My family's sympathy goes out to the Ortega Rueda,Sarabia Mancinas, Gonzalez Leyva, Ramirez Leyva and Leyva Cabrera families for this senseless loss of your children. We cannot begin to imagine your grief and suffering but we will pray for you and the souls of the deceased every day until we ourselves pass on and meet in Heaven. Te acompanamos en tus sentimientos en esta hota obscura de dolor y separacion. Le rogamos al Senor que la justicia se aplique a estos demonios que matan nuestros hijos, nuestro futuro. Amen.
ReplyDeleteMy prayers are with the families. Good Bless
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