Acapulco: Mexican troops and police are searching for up to 17 people who were abducted by gunmen as the group headed to a wedding in the crime-plagued southern state of Guerrero.
A state security department official told AFP on condition of anonymity that 10 people were reported missing following Saturday’s mass abduction in the municipality of Arcelia.
But Governor Hector Astudillo said the mayor of Arcelia reported that more people were taken away.
“There is an important deployment to search for missing people and (the mayor) says there are 17 of them,” Astudillo said.
State police had reported over the weekend that at least seven people were kidnapped by an armed group that intercepted a convoy of vehicles heading to the village of La Palma.
The bullet-riddled bodies of two men were found at the scene of the abduction along with some 15 abandoned cars, including two that were burned, and two motorcycles.
A third body was found 300 meters (yards) from the road.
Hundreds of people — relatives of the missing and residents of Arcelia — held a protest in the town on Tuesday, demanding that authorities find them.
In another incident, five teachers were kidnapped from a secondary school in the town of Ajuchitlan del Progreso on Monday, a state police official said. The teachers were bundled into a car and taken away.
Guerrero is plagued by violence and multiple cases of missing people, including the disappearance and presumed massacre of 43 students in September 2014.