CULIACÁN, Mexico: Mexican authorities said Saturday that 18 people have been found alive after being kidnapped in the country’s northwest a day earlier.
Sinaloa state security secretary Gerardo Merida said in a brief statement on Friday that an emergency hotline received reports of kidnappings from several homes in a working-class neighborhood of Culiacan.
According to the statement, 18 people have been freed who had been kidnapped in Culiacan. The authorities are still looking for another seven who have yet to be released.
Ruben Rocha, Sinaloa Governor said on X that those released were nine adults and nine children, and that the search for the remaining abductees was continuing.
The latest incident followed Thursday’s gunfight in Sinaloa town of Badiraguato that is birthplace and home of notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
Authorities declined to speculate on whether the two incidents are related.
Culiacan was also the scene of violent riots by the Sinaloa cartel in October 2019, following an aborted operation to capture El Chapo’s son Ovidio Guzman, and again in January 2023, when his son was finally captured.
Murders, kidnappings, and enforced disappearances are common in Mexico, especially in areas where turf wars between drug gangs such as Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel take place.
About 450,000 people have been killed across Mexico since 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon launched a controversial military crackdown on drugs, according to official data.
