Mexican mayor’s severed head placed atop pickup truck 6 days after taking office

The mayor of a violence-plagued city in Mexico became killed on Sunday along with his decapitated body left in a pickup truck and his severed head positioned atop the automobile’s roof.

Alejandro Arcos, 43, became killed correct six days after he took jam of job as mayor of the city of Chilpancingo, a city of spherical 280,000 folk in southwestern Mexico.

Town, the capital of Guerrero jabber, is so violent that a drug gang openly staged an illustration, hijacked a government armored automobile and took police hostage in 2023 to score the discharge of arrested suspects.

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Photography of what perceived to be Arcos’ severed head atop a white pick-up truck were circulating on social media. In diversified photos, his headless body partially covered with a blanket will also furthermore be seen in the passenger facet of the truck.

Arcos’ social media posts main as a lot as his death showed him supervising catastrophe relief efforts following the impact of Hurricane John final month, which prompted severe flooding in seashore resort Acapulco and surrounding towns.

Mourners, including Arcos’ wife, attended a funeral for the slain unswerving on Monday.

“His loss mourns the whole Guerrero society and fills us with indignation,” Guerrero Governor Evelyn Salgado acknowledged in a observation shared on social media.

Alejandro Moreno, the nationwide chief of the Institutional Revolutionary Celebration, or PRI, lamented Arcos’ killing and acknowledged it came correct three days after the unusual city government’s secretary, Francisco Tapia, became shot to death.

“They had been as an different of job no longer as a lot as every week,” Moreno wrote on his social media accounts. “They were young and factual public servants who were looking for out progress for their neighborhood.”

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Moreno called on the federal attorney general’s jam of job to lead the investigation into Arcos and Tapia’s murders, given “the problem of ungovernability in Guerrero.”

Guerrero has change into one of many deadliest states for aspiring and elected public officials, as successfully as for journalists. As a minimum six candidates for public jam of job were killed in the jabber in the slide-as a lot as Mexico’s June 2 elections.

Bloody turf battles absorb raged between two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos. The battle has resulted in dozens of gruesome killings and some high-profile scandals.

A previous mayor became caught on video it sounds as if preserving a assembly with leaders of one of many gangs at a restaurant. She became subsequently expelled from her social gathering.

In July 2023, federal officials acknowledged an illustration held by a total bunch of folks in Chilpancingo that month had been organized by the Ardillos gang to score the discharge of two gang leaders arrested for pills and weapons possession.

The demonstrators largely blocked all traffic on the motorway between Mexico Metropolis and Acapulco for two days, battled security forces and commandeered a police armored truck and former it to ram down the gates of the jabber legislature building.

The demonstrators abducted 10 contributors of the jabber police and Nationwide Guard, as successfully as three jabber and federal officials, and held them hostage to build in power their demands before releasing them.

Final week, the Mexican military seized the weapons of native police in the cartel-dominated city of Culiacan in the nation’s northwest Sinaloa jabber, as violence and gunfights absorb ravaged that city in recent weeks also. The Mexican military has been diagnosed to take weapons from distrusted police forces it suspects of both stressful about aiding the cartel, or over concerns the devices were carrying unregistered hands that made abuses more difficult to designate.

Reuters and The Linked Press contributed to this file.