Sixteen shot, found dead around Mexico

At least 16 were reported to have been shot or found dead in apparent criminal incidents around Mexico on 3-4 December, some found dismembered in bags or mutilated, the website Proceso reported on 4 December. Seven of these were killed in the northern city of Torreón in the state of Coahuila, including a man found in a house, castrated and with his throat slit. In other incidents three gunmen were killed in a shootout with troops in the northern district of Saltillo, while in Matachí in the northern state of Chihuahua, gunmen ambushed a military patrol, killing a soldier. A man was dragged half-naked out of a motel and shot in its courtyard late on 3 December, in the district of Cuernavaca south of Mexico City. A couple was also reported kidnapped from their flat in Cuernavaca before dawn on 4 December, Milenio reported. Police found two children or teenagers, presumably their children, when they arrived at the flat. Separately on 4 December, the prosecutor-general's office declared that a beauty queen who died in a shootout between gunmen and soldiers on 24 November was one of those firing on troops and was not killed for misfortune as first thought. María Susana Flores Gámez - beauty queen in 2012 of the north-western state of Sinaloa - fired an AK-47 assault rifle from a car carrying suspected members of the Sinaloa Cartel. The shootout took place in the localities of Salvador Alvarado and Palmar de los Leal in that state; its victims were Flores, two soldiers and a passer-by. Police now believed that her presumed boyfriend and one of the gunmen, a cartel member dubbed El Cholo Iván, did not die as reported and perhaps escaped, Proceso reported on 4 December.