Acapulco, Mexico – The head of security for the municipal government in this Pacific coast resort city was kidnapped amid a wave of violence that Mayor Felix Salgado attributed Tuesday to “political motives.”
Salgado’s office said city hall security chief Eusebio Palacios was kidnapped Monday by at least seven armed men who drove up to him in several vehicles along an Acapulco avenue.
Palacio, a retired army captain, was abducted as he was driving along in another vehicle with his wife and daughter, who were not harmed in the incident.
Authorities do not know where the security chief is being held, and they fear that he was taken hostage by drug traffickers who in recent months have unleashed a reign of terror in this Mexican resort, with gruesome killings of police officers.
In statements to the press, the mayor said that the cases of violence have had political motives and that some of them were designed to intimidate the public not to vote in the July 2 elections.
Federal authorities have ordered the army and the police to increase their vigilance in Acapulco and surrounding towns in Guerrero state, a region that has been wracked by the “war to the death” being fought by rival drug traffickers and other organized criminal gangs.
