An infant and a toddler among six family members were shot to death in a home in Mexico

The infant and toddler were among six members of the same family murdered in approximately central state of Mexico a local official said on Monday that the country was plagued by cartel-related violence.

Authorities say gunmen burst into a home in the Guanajuato city of Leon on Sunday evening and opened fire on a family.

“Unfortunately, two children and four women died,” state Governor Diego Sinhue Rodriguez told reporters. It was determined that they were an eight-month-old baby and a two-year-old boy.

Two men survived because they saw the attackers coming and hid on the roof, he added.

Guanajuato is one of Mexico’s most violent states due to turf wars between rival cartels involved in drug trafficking, fuel theft and other crimes. In Guanajuato, with a population of just over 6 million, more police officers were shot in 2023 – about 60 – than in the entire United States.

In April, he became a candidate for mayor shot in the street in Guanajuato as she launched her campaign. In December, 11 people died and a dozen more were injured in an attack on a pre-Christmas party in Guanajuato. Just a few days earlier bodies of five university students They were found stuffed inside a vehicle on a dirt road in the state.

Over the years Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel he fought a bloody turf war with the Jalisco cartel for control of Guanajuato.

Since 2006, when the government deployed the military to combat drug trafficking, more than 450,000 murders have been recorded in Mexico, most of them attributable to criminal gangs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.