The personal secretary and an adviser to Mexico City’s mayor were killed by gunmen on a motorcycle in a central neighborhood of the capital Tuesday, authorities said.
Mayor Clara Brugada holds the second most powerful political post in the country to President Claudia Sheinbaum, and they are allies in the Morena party.
Brugada said in a statement that her secretary Ximena Guzmán and adviser José Muñoz were killed in the Moderna neighborhood. Brugada called the killings a “direct attack.”
Authorities were investigating the motive and checking surveillance camera footage to identify the attackers, Brugada said.
Forensic experts were seen gathering evidence at the scene of the crime on a busy avenue, as police officers stood guard. A body covered in a white sheet lay on the ground near the victims’ car, whose windows were shattered.
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“There will be no impunity. Those responsible will be arrested and must face justice,” Brugada said in her statement.
Sheinbaum lamented the killings and said during her morning press briefing that there would not be impunity. Sheinbaum served as Mexico City’s mayor prior to winning the presidency last year.
“It’s a deplorable incident,” Sheinbaum said, pledging her full support to Brugada and her team.
In 2020, gunmen from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel attempted to kill Sheinbaum’s then police chief, Omar Garcia Harfuch, in a spectacular ambush on a central boulevard. He was wounded and three people were killed.
Garcia Harfuch, who is now Sheinbaum’s national security minister, said his office was helping search for the perpetrators of Tuesday’s attack.
“We will not let this cowardly act go unpunished,” he wrote on social media.
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Tuesday’s shooting unfolded just hours after gunmen opened fire and killed seven people, including some minors, in Guanajuato, Mexico.
While Mexican politicians and their aides, particularly at the local level, often get caught up in gang-related crime, such murders on the streets of the capital are relatively rare.
But politicians are frequently targeted elsewhere in Mexico.
Just last week, a mayoral candidate and three of her supporters were shot dead at a campaign event in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz. That attack came two days after Cecilia Ruvalcaba, a councilmember in Mexico’s western state of Jalisco, was gunned down in a hospital.
In April, Jose Luis Pereira, a senior member of the Teocaltiche city government, was shot and killed while dining at a restaurant in Jalisco.
In December 2024, a Mexican congressman who was a member of the ruling coalition was shot dead in Veracruz.
About two months before that, a mayor was murdered and decapitated in the southern state of Guerrero. A former prosecutor and local police official was later arrested in connection with the killing.
In June 2024, a mayor was killed in southern Mexico, less than a week after another politician was assassinated in the same region.
That same month, a local councilwoman was gunned down as she was leaving her home in Guerrero. Her murder came a few days after the mayor of a town in western Mexico and her bodyguard were killed outside of a gym, just hours after Sheinbaum was elected president.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
