Police found the bodies of nine people, including three federal agents, in two areas Thursday near this Caribbean resort city, apparent victims of drug killings, officials said.
Five bodies were found on a dirt road 10 miles south of the resort city, all shot in the head, Assistant State Attorney General Luis Alfonso Chi told a news conference. Three were federal police agents.
The charred remains of four people were found in the trunk of a burned-out car parked near a dump, about six miles from Cancun’s airport.
Police said two anonymous emergency calls Thursday morning reported the killings.
Officials said they had no motive or suspects in the cases, but the weapons used and the execution-style killings appeared to be related to drugs. State and federal officials were investigating.
The surrounding state of Quintana Roo was a major drug trafficking route in the 1990s, when former state Gov. Mario Villanueva allegedly helped Mexico’s Juarez cartel move tons of Colombian cocaine by boat, airplane and truck along the coast.
That drug ring was supposedly broken up with the arrests of Villanueva and reputed kingpin Alcides Ramon Magana in 2001, both of whom still await trial.
