Violent weekend in southern Mexico leaves 24 people dead

At least 24 people, some bearing signs of torture, were killed in a series of incidents over the weekend in Mexico’s violence-plagued southern state of Guerrero, officials have said.

Authorities found nine bodies – five of which were dismembered – on a road, officials said Monday, after two sailors were discovered dead elsewhere in the state over the weekend. Faced with an uptick in bloodshed the state governor held an “urgent session” with army commanders and federal and state police in an effort to strengthen security in the region, the state’s security spokesman Roberto Alvarez told a Mexican television channel. 

“The bodies of nine males with visible signs of torture” were discovered on Sunday night on a road between the towns of Tixtla and Atliaca, in Guerrero’s central region, the state’s secretary of security said in a statement. 

Agents at the local prosecutors office reported finding “four bodies tied at the feet and hands.”