Two of the four Americans kidnapped at gunpoint in Mexico last week are dead and two are still alive, a Mexican state governor has said.
It would be recalled that four US citizens were kidnapped by armed men on 3 March while driving into the city of Matamoros in the north-eastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico across the border from Texas.
They had travelled there for cosmetic surgery, relatives told the media.
A US spokesman, John Kirby appeared to confirm the deaths on Tuesday.
“We offer our deepest condolences to the friends and families of those who were killed in these attacks,” he said, adding that all attacks on US citizens were “unacceptable, no matter where or under what circumstances they occur.”
The governor of Tamaulipas, Américo Villarreal Anaya, said during a news conference that Mexico’s Attorney General’s office had confirmed the two deaths.
A Mexican official said that two men had been found dead, while another man and a woman were safe and in the hands of authorities.
Mr Villarreal said “ambulances and security personnel” were on their way to offer medical support to the survivors.
The Americans were found as a result of joint search operations, the Tamaulipas State Attorney General said in a statement, though it did not share details on how the US citizens were located.
“We are very sorry that this happened in our country and we send our condolences to the families of the victims, friends, and the United States government, and we will continue doing our work to guarantee peace and tranquillity,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said.
The four were driving through Matamoros – a city of 500,000 located directly across the border from the Texas town of Brownsville – in a white minivan with North Carolina licence plates when unidentified gunmen opened fire, the FBI said this week.
The video shows them being loaded into a pickup truck by heavily armed men. One is manhandled onto the vehicle while others appear to be unconscious and are dragged to the truck.
A Mexican woman, reported to be a bystander, was killed in the incident.
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