Mexico City – The head of a police anti-kidnapping unit in Mexico state was killed by unidentified gunmen in the northern section of Mexico City, officials said Sunday.
Azael Ovando Rios was ambushed and gunned down Saturday afternoon in the Gustavo Madero section of Mexico City, near the Federal District’s border with Mexico state.
Mexico state, the country’s most populous state, surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area.
Investigators have determined that a vehicle cut off the 38-year-old Ovando Rios, who lived in Tlanepantla, and two gunmen opened fire on him.
The police officer was hit at least four times in the chest, according to the results of the preliminary investigation.
Ovando Rios’s murder comes on the heels of the killings of eight people, including a teenager, earlier in the weekend in two separate shootings apparently linked to drug trafficking in Mexico City and the state of Michoacan.
The Federal District Prosecutor’s Office, or PGJDF, said three men and a 16-year-old boy were shot to death Saturday while driving through the capital’s Iztapalapa neighborhood.
The Mexican press reported that the killings were drug-related.
In the central state of Michoacan, meanwhile, prosecutors said four men were killed Friday in a shootout with police.
The men, suspected of being involved in drug trafficking, got involved in a shootout with police in the town of Naranja de Chila, Michoacan prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Magdalena Guzman said.
One police officer was wounded in the shootout, Guzman said.
Three drug cartels are fighting for control of the illegal trade in Michoacan.
The Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the drug organization led by the Valencia brothers and jailed drug kingpin Osiel Cardenas Guillen’s Gulf cartel have stepped up their clashes in recent weeks in the state.
The wave of drug-related violence has especially affected the states of Michoacan, Sinaloa, Guerrero and Tamaulipas.
Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said last week that federal officials were “working with determination to coordinate with state and municipal governments to eliminate this problem.”
Violence unleashed by drug traffickers and other organized crime groups claimed some 1,500 lives nationwide last year, mainly along the border with the United States.
Over the past five years, according to government figures, more than 53,000 people, 17 of them the heads of criminal organizations, have been arrested for committing crimes against health, a category that includes drug-related offenses.
