MEXICO CITY – The mayor of Texistepec, a city in the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz, and his wife were shot and wounded by four gunmen, prosecutors said.
Mayor Enrique Antonio Paul was shot as he left his house on Tuesday morning, the regional prosecutor’s office for the South Coatzacoalcos Zone of the Veracruz Attorney General’s Office said in a statement.
The 46-year-old mayor, a member of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was taken to a hospital in Acayucan, “where he received medical treatment and is listed in stable condition,” the AG’s office said.
The politician’s wife is also listed in stable condition, the AG’s office said.
Veracruz has been plagued by a turf war between rival drug cartels that has sent the murder rate skyrocketing in the past few years.
The Gulf, Los Zetas and Jalisco Nueva Generacion cartels, as well as breakaway members of the once-powerful Familia Michoacana organization, are fueling the violence in the state.
Veracruz, Mexico’s third most populous state, is coveted as a key drug-trafficking corridor to the United States, officials say.
Federal and state security forces killed 10 suspected Zetas cartel members in a shootout last month in the mountainous central region of Veracruz.
The port city of Veracruz will be the site of the 24th Ibero-American Summit of heads of state and government and will host the 22nd Central American and Caribbean Games later this year.
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