Nine people were killed Saturday when gunmen opened fire on their truck in Mexico, prosecutors said, citing a conflict between landowners as the cause of the attack.
The truck was “ambushed” in Nochixtlan, Mexico’s Oaxaca state, while transporting residents of a neighboring town, leaving nine people dead “on the spot,” a news release said.
Four other people – three women and a man – were injured and hospitalized, the local prosecutor’s office added, criticizing “aggressions between communities” that do not contribute to “solving the problems.”
According to the same source, the prosecutor’s office is working to identify the attackers.
This is the second attack this week in the state of Oaxaca regarding the ownership of agricultural land.
On Wednesday, five people were killed in a similar clash – a civilian, two police officers and two municipal officials.
Conflicts between communities over ownership of agricultural land have been a decades-long problem in Mexico, particularly in indigenous regions in the south of the country.