Mexico City---Authorities are investigating allegations that an armed group abducted at least 11 people after occupying a town in Mexico's troubled southern state of Guerrero last week, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The group described itself as vigilante "community police" seeking justice against a local drug gang.
Guerrero state chief prosecutor Miguel Angel Godinez Munoz said authorities are investigating whether it was really one of the state's legal community police forces or a group infiltrated by a gang.
The armed men left Chilapa after an agreement with the government, but then residents reported the disappearance of four people as well as the abduction of 11 others, Godinez Munoz said.
"They say they were accompanying their relatives when they were snatched by the group of armed citizens," he told Radio Formula.
The prosecutor said he does not have credible information to confirm claims that as many as 30 people have gone missing.
Chilapa, a majority ethnic Nahua town, is at the center of a turf war between two gangs, Los Rojos and Los Ardillos.
Earlier this month, a candidate for mayor from the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was killed ahead of the June 7 elections.
In November, 11 decapitated bodies were found near the town.
Chilapa is in the same region as Iguala, a city where prosecutors say local police abducted 43 college students in September and delivered them to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang, which slaughtered them.
AFP
