Eight killed around Mexico, drug cash found

"At least" eight people were reported to have been killed or found dead on 7 November in different parts of Mexico, including one in the form of a severed head found on a road outside Ríoverde in north-central Mexico. Others included suspected criminals killed in shootouts with the police, Proceso reported. Criminals were also reported that day to have kidnapped the mother of a regional legislator in western Mexico. Sandra Luz Ríos Ríos was abducted from her bakery in a village in the Benito Juárez district of the state of Guerrero, Proceso reported. Her son Ricardo Ángel Barrientos Ríos was elected last July to the state parliament of Guerrero for the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party; he was mayor of Benito Juárez in 2009-12. Guerrero has in past months witnessed regular violence as cartels fight to control its territory. In the northern state of Nuevo León, authorities presented to the press on 7 November four presumed members of the Gulf Cartel likely involved in murders and kidnappings, detained on a state highway on 22 October, Proceso reported. They were said to have confessed to their roles in 13 killings including of policemen, and 16 kidnappings in southern Nuevo León. Separately the explosion of a house for a gas leak in the north-western city of Tijuana led police to find there about 1.8 million USD thought to belong to the Sinaloa Cartel, Proceso reported on 7 November. Five children or teenagers were injured by the explosion as was a woman identified as niece of the trafficker and cartel member Raydel López Uriarte, jailed in 2010. In Coatzacoalcos in the eastern state of Veracruz the army arrested a "criminal cell," confiscating from them items including six cars, 500 doses of cocaine, cash worth about 20,000 USD and arms including a machine gun and a rocket launcher, Proceso reported.