18 people kidnapped in northwest Mexico found alive

Authorities announced this Saturday, March 23 that They located alive 18 of the 25 people who were kidnapped on Friday in the city of Culiacánin northwest Mexico.

“18 people who would have been deprived of their liberty have been released” in Culiacán, capital of the state of Sinaloa, said the local Public Security Secretariat in a brief statement.

The agency added that, according to reports, 25 people had been kidnapped in total, “so there would be 7 left to be released”. For his part, the governor of Sinaloa, Rubén Rocha, stated that of the people released, 9 are adults and 9 are minors.

“They are given the attention that corresponds to them as victims,” ​​said the leader on social network X. “We continue working on the search operation”he added.

The authorities had reported on Friday that 15 people were kidnapped in several homes in working-class neighborhoods of the city.

A report from the Security Secretariat to which an AFP collaborator had access indicates that the kidnappers arrived in vans with long and short weapons, and fired shots into the air, according to testimonies collected.

Sinaloa media assured that the kidnapped people belonged to seven families from different neighborhoods of Culiacán.

After the complaints, The government announced a special operation with the military and members of the National Guard to locate the victims.

Culiacán has been the scene of violent riots by the Sinaloa cartel in October 2019, during the failed arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, son of drug trafficker Joaquín Chapo Guzmán, and in January 2023 when the boss’s heir was finally captured.

The kidnappings occurred a day after three people died during an armed confrontation in the town of Badiraguato, birthplace of Chapo Guzmán, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking and money laundering.

Mexico daily suffers the attacks of organized crime with massacres, kidnappings and forced disappearances.

According to official figures, The country has accumulated some 450,000 murders and more than 100,000 disappearances since 2006when the government declared an open war on drug trafficking with the participation of the military.