Eighteen of the 25 people kidnapped Friday in Culiacan, in northwest Mexico, have been freed, authorities announced Saturday.
“Eighteen people who had been deprived of their liberty were released
,” said the Public Security Secretariat in a press release.
A total of 25 people had been kidnapped and
“there are seven left to be released
,” he added.
The governor of the state of Sinaloa, of which Culiacan is the capital, said that of the 18 people released, nine are adults and nine minors.
Authorities had previously reported an investigation into the alleged kidnapping of at least fifteen people in Culiacan, and local press spoke of 40 people kidnapped in an attack by heavily armed men in the capital. State of Sinaloa.
The armed kidnappers, hooded and dressed in black, arrived in vans and fired shots into the air, according to a report from the State Security Secretariat, to which AFP had access.
One of the people who called for help testified to having
“heard the cries of the family calling for help”
, according to the same source.
The abductees belong to seven families, according to local media.
This event occurred Friday the day after the death of three people during an armed clash in Badiraguato (northwest), hometown of the former leader of the Sinaloa cartel, Joaquin “
El Chapo”
Guzmán, who is serving a sentence to life in prison in the United States for drug trafficking and money laundering.
“We do not know if (the possible mass kidnapping) is linked”
to the events in Badiraguato, commented the Security Secretariat.
With more than 450,000 assassinations and 100,000 disappearances since the launch in 2006 of a militarized offensive against drug traffickers, Mexico is one of the most violent countries in the world.