US State Dept Travel Warning Issued After 8 Bodies Found in Cancun

The U.S. State Department has issued a travel warning after eight people were found dead in Cancun.

The dead bodies were found across the popular Mexican tourist resort city.

The State Department issued a warning labeled “Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution” for the country of Mexico on Aug. 22.

Travel Warning

“Exercise increased caution in Mexico due to crime,” the department stated. “Some areas have increased risk. Violent crime, such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery, is widespread. The U.S. government has limited ability to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens in many areas of Mexico as U.S. government employees are prohibited from travel to these areas.”

“U.S. government employees are prohibited from intercity travel after dark in many areas of Mexico. U.S. government employees are also not permitted to drive from the U.S.-Mexico border to or from the interior parts of Mexico with the exception of daytime travel on Highway 15 between Nogales and Hermosillo.”

The department issues specific warning levels for each state; the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancun is located, along with a number of other popular tourist areas, is under a level 2 warning.

The warning for Quintana Roo is stated as follows: “According to Government of Mexico statistics, the state experienced an increase in homicide rates compared to the same period in 2016. While most of these homicides appeared to be targeted, criminal organization assassinations, turf battles between criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens. Shooting incidents injuring or killing bystanders have occurred.”

While level 2 warnings are issued to travelers to exercise increased caution, there are multiple level 3 warnings, or alerts, to reconsider traveling to those areas, as part of the country-wide alert. For instance, for the Chihuahua state, the level 3 warning includes the detail that there has been an increase in murders during daylight hours in downtown Ciudad Juarez. United States government employees, therefore, have been prohibited from traveling there.

Tourists enjoy the beach during a windy day in Cancun, Mexico, on Dec. 1, 2010. (Omar Torres/AFP/Getty Images)

Bodies in Cancun

Prosecutors said on Aug. 21 that they found a total of eight dead bodies on the streets of the Mexican resort city of Cancun, with two bodies dumped at two spots and four others found shot to death individually.

The bodies of a man and a woman were found in an abandoned taxi on Aug. 21, and the dismembered bodies of two men were found in several plastic bags at another spot.

Also that day, one man was found bound and shot to death. The prosecutors’ office for the state of Quintana Roo said another man was killed while lying in a hammock, yet another was found shot and covered in a plastic bag.

Details of the eighth body were not immediately available.

None of the killings occurred in the city’s beach-side hotel zone.

Mexico’s Interior Department said in July that murders rose in Mexico by 16 percent to 15,973 during the first half of 2018, the highest since records began in 1997, The Guardian reported.

Mexican officials have blamed the rise in killings on battles between the Jalisco and Sinaloa drug cartels.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

From NTD.tv