The mayor of a state capital in southern Mexico has been killed just one week after he took office, officials said on Sunday.
Alejandro Arcos was sworn in on Monday last week as mayor of Chilpancingo, a city so violent that a drug gang openly staged a demonstration, hijacked a government armored car and took police hostage last year to win the release of arrested suspects.
Chilpancingo is the capital of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located.
Photo: Reuters
The state prosecutors’ office issued a statement on Sunday confirming Arcos had been killed, but provided no details.
Alejandro Moreno, the leader of the Institutional Revolutionary Party lamented Arcos’ killing and said the newly installed secretary of the city council had also been murdered three days earlier.
“They had been in office less than a week,” Moreno wrote on social media. “They were young and honest public servants who were seeking progress for their community.”
Chilpancingo has long been the scene of bloody turf battles between two drug gangs, the Ardillos and the Tlacos. The battle has resulted in dozens of gruesome slayings and some high-profile scandals.
A previous mayor was caught on video apparently holding a meeting with leaders of one of the gangs at a restaurant. She was subsequently expelled from her party.
Federal officials in July last year said that a demonstration held by hundreds of people in Chilpancingo that month had been organized by the Ardillos gang to win the release of two gang leaders arrested for drugs and weapons possession.
The demonstrators blocked all traffic on the highway between Mexico City and Acapulco for two days, battled security forces, and commandeered a police armored truck and used it to ram down the gates of the state legislature building.
The demonstrators abducted 10 members of the state police and National Guard, as well as three state and federal officials, and held them hostage to enforce their demands before releasing them.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
SHOW OF SUPPORT: The move showed that aggression toward Greenland is a question for Europe and Canada, and the consequences are global, not just Danish, experts said Canada and France, which adamantly oppose US President Donald Trump’s wish to control Greenland, were to open consulates in the Danish autonomous territory’s capital yesterday, in a strong show of support for the local government. Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has repeatedly insisted that Washington needs to control the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island for security reasons. Trump last month backed off his threats to seize Greenland after saying he had struck a “framework” deal with NATO chief Mark Rutte to ensure greater US influence. A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss ways to meet Washington’s security concerns
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
RSS