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27 people kidnapped in Mexico
Armed men kidnapped 27 farm workers on property owned by a suspected member of the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel, local state authorities said.
Armed men kidnapped 27 farm workers on property owned by a suspected member of the Ciudad Juarez drug cartel, local state authorities said.
The men on Monday stormed the farm of La Guajira, in the municipality of Culiacan, officials in the north-western state of Sinaloa said in a statement on Tuesday night.
The 27 people kidnapped are "agricultural workers," the statement read.
The property owner allegedly has family ties to Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a drug lord known as 'The Viceroy' and a member of the Carrillo Fuentes clan that heads the powerful Ciudad Juarez drug cartel on the US border with Mexico, the statement read.
Police are guarding the farm where the workers were kidnapped, the statement added.
The statement made no mention of local news reports which said that a female kidnap victim managed to escape.
In 2008 some 4,550 people have been murdered in Mexico, the overwhelming majority of them attributed to the three-year old war among drug cartels for the main border drug export centers.
Mexican authorities say the clashes are between the drug cartels of Ciudad Juarez, Sinaloa of Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman and of the Gulf of Mexico, led by Osiel Cardenas, extradited to the United States in early 2007.
