MEXICO CITY – The bodies of five men and a woman were found in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, home turf of captured drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, state prosecutors said on Sunday.
The corpses were found at dawn in a parking lot in the Pacific port of Mazatlán, said Guadalupe Martínez, a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office in Sinaloa. He could not say how the victims died.
It also was unclear whether the deaths were related to conflicts between Guzmán Loera’s Sinaloa Cartel and rival gangs in the state, where violence has crept up again in recent months.
Guzmán Loera was captured by Mexican security forces in Mazatlán in February 2014 after years on the run, then broke out of prison in July 2015 through a tunnel dug right into his cell. He was recaptured in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, in January.
Guzmán Loera currently is fighting efforts by the Mexican government to extradite him to the United States. A Mexican judge’s decision on one of his appeals against extradition is due to be made in the coming days.
NATALIE SCHACHAR
JEAN LUIS ARCE
