Mayor gunned down on highway in Southern Mexico

Assailants fired on and killed a small-town mayor and his driver as they were traveling along a highway in south-central Mexico, media reported on Sunday.

Ambrosio Soto, the mayor of Pungarabato, in southern Guerrero state, had complained of receiving death threats and reportedly had a Federal Police security detail at the time of the shooting late Saturday night.

Four Federal Police agents were injured in the incident, the online news site Animal Politico reported.

It was the second assassination of a mayor in less than 24 hours, after the mayor of San Juan Chamula, in the southern state of Chiapas, and four others, were shot and killed early Saturday during a protest.

Soto, who became mayor in 2015, had said he was being targeted by organized crime, telling a major daily just last week that "upon taking the oath of office, we received an order that the treasurer and director of public works had to be selected by the local gang leader."

He added the criminal ring controlled everything in the region, even the police and the military.

Guerrero is one of the country's most violence torn states, mainly due to rival drug trafficking groups. Enditem