Bus passengers kidnapped in Mexico

Reuters: Twenty-two passengers kidnapped by armed men from a bus in northern Mexico last week may be migrants, a state government official said on Monday (March 11). The gunmen had let the rest of the passengers go unharmed after intercepting the bus in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas last Thursday (March 07). Mexican authorities have not been contacted by any family members of the missing, suggesting they may be migrants, state security spokesman Luis Alberto Rodriguez said in an interview. Rodriguez said later that following investigations, authorities had registered 22 people missing, three more than previously reported. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at a news conference on Tuesday (March 12) that investigations were ongoing to determine what happened including whether the abduction was in fact a means to cross the border into the United States. Tamaulipas has for years suffered high levels of murders and disappearances amid clashes between violent criminal gangs. In August 2010, 72 undocumented migrants from Central and South America were murdered by the Zetas gang at a ranch in Tamaulipas. A year later, nearly 200 corpses, many of them Mexican, were found in mass graves in the area.