Eight Slain at Birthday Party in Tepic

EFE

Eight people were slain at a birthday party in Tepic, capital of the western Mexican state of Nayarit, the state Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday.

The victims, ranging in age from 17 to 48, were found dead at 7:35 p.m. Tuesday.

Citing accounts from neighbors, the AG’s office said the eight people were celebrating the birthday of one member of the group at a residence in Tepic when three vehicles rolled up.

“Armed and hooded subjects” got out of the vehicles, entered the residence and opened fire before fleeing in “an unknown direction,” the AG’s office said in a statement.

Fifteen people died last October when gunmen opened fire on a Tepic car wash operated by a drug-rehabilitation clinic.

In Guerrero state, southeast of Nayarit on Mexico’s Pacific coast, police found four men decapitated early Wednesday, official sources told Efe,

The bodies and severed heads were discovered outside the city of Zihuatanejo at a spot near the boundary with the neighboring state of Michoacan, according to personnel in the Guerrero AG’s office.

Accompanying the bodies were messages from the killers, a common feature of gangland killings in Mexico.

An anonymous 5:00 a.m. telephone call led Zihuatanejo municipal police to the village of Los Almendros, where they found the bodies and heads left at a bus stop.

The victims bore signs of torture and beating, the state AG’s office said.

Guerrero has been the scene of numerous killings linked to a battle among three different cartels for control of the drug trade in the state, an entry point for cocaine from South America and a center of marijuana and opium production.

Last weekend, five women were found murdered in the coastal resort city of Acapulco, Guerrero, which has suffered from a loss of foreign tourists scared away by the violence.