Six people were strangled to death and one decapitated in the Mexican tourist resort of Cancún April 14—the latest mass killing to strike the city in the last few weeks. Police found the bodies of the five men and two women in a shack in the outskirts of the Yucatan Peninsula city, which has largely escaped the drug-related violence that has rocked Acapulco, a faded tourist destination on the Pacific coast. Quintana Roo authorities said the vicitms were small-scale drug dealers. In a separate incident that day, police found the body of another man in Cancún who had been gagged, bound and wrapped in sheets. (AP, April 15) The slayings come one month after seven were killed when gunmen burst into Cancún's La Sirenita (Little Mermaid) bar, targeting members of the city's taxi-drivers who were holding a meeting there. Several Cancún taxi drivers had been arrested recently for selling drugs or participating in drug-related killings, authorities said. (AP, Univision, March 15)

Continuing violence is reported from northern Mexico as well. On April 16, a shoot-out in the streets of López Rayón, a pueblo in González municipality, Tamaulipas, left three dead. (Vanguardia, Saltillo, April 16) Two cadavers were meanwhile found on a riverbank in Juárez suburb of Monterrey, Nuevo León. An investigation led to the discovery of seven mass graves in the area, containing the remains of at least five bodies that had been dismembered. The discovery came during a visit to Nuevo León by President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has pledged to reduce narco-violence. (ADN Mundo, April 18)