Mexico’s police are on the front line in the fight against drugs gangs Mexican police searching for nine officers who were abducted by armed men on Friday have found two of them dead.
The other seven are still missing after their patrol was ambushed as it investigated a murder in the southern state of Guerrero.
The Mexican army has joined the search near the border with Mexico state.
Guerrero, the centre of Mexico’s opium poppy production, has been a focus of drugs-related violence that has killed more than 28,000 Mexicans since 2006.
The nine agents from the federal investigative police had travelled to the city of Teloloapan after a man was reported shot dead.
As they went in pursuit of the suspected killers they were stopped by a large group of gunmen.
Two officers were found shot dead close to where they were abducted. The fate of the other seven is unknown.
Teloloapan is close to the mining district of Taxco, where in May 55 bodies were recovered from an abandoned silver mine that drugs gangs re thought to have been using as a mass grave.
It has also been the scene of a violent struggle between rival drugs gangs for control of smuggling routes to the US along the Pacific coast.
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