Mexican official says two Americans kidnapped in Mexico dead, two alive after Matomoro abduction.
Two of the four US citizens abducted after crossing the border into northeastern Mexico have been found dead, a senior Mexican official said.
The attorney general’s office confirmed that of the four abductees, “two of them are dead, one is injured and the other is alive,” Tamaulipas state governor Americo Villarreal told the Mexican president by telephone at a press conference on Tuesday.
The governor did not share additional details about where or how the individuals were found.
A Mexican official told Reuters news agency on Tuesday that two of the four hostages had been found dead.
A woman and another man were alive, safe and in the hands of authorities, the official said.
Mexican President Manuel Lopez Obrador said one person was in custody in connection with the kidnapping in Tamaulipas, which has long been one of the most violent states in Mexico.
The four US citizens had been crossing from Texas to Matamoros, Mexico, on Friday when their white minivan was fired upon in what authorities say was crossfire from rival cartel groups.
A video later surfaced showing the four hostages being loaded into the back of a pickup truck by armed men. Mexican officials said a Mexican woman was also killed in Friday’s crossfire.
The U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a safety alert for Matamoros on Friday, saying it is “classified as Level 4: Do Not Travel.”
The city of Matamoros is dominated by factions of the powerful Gulf drug cartel, who often fight each other.
Thousands of Mexicans have disappeared amid the violence in the state of Tamaulipas alone, on top of the more than 100,000 people reported missing in the country in recent decades, the vast majority after 2007, when the Mexican government launched a militarized crackdown on drug cartels .
Despite the backlash, violence continues, with cartels vying for control in large parts of the country.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered a $50,000 reward “for the return of the victims and the arrest of those involved”.