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A mayor in central Mexico has been shot dead inside a town hall, months after surviving an earlier assassination attempt, authorities said on Wednesday.
The victim, Valentin Lavin, was the mayor of Temoac, a municipality in the central state of Morelos, a region near Mexico City where several drug cartels operate.
Lavin, an ally of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s leftist political party, had survived an armed attack in January, according to local media reports.
The Morelos State Prosecutor’s Office said forensic experts and police officers recovered the mayor’s body inside the local government headquarters.
In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said security agencies had launched an operation to identify and arrest those responsible for the killing.
Authorities have not disclosed a possible motive for the attack or confirmed whether it was linked to organised crime.
Mexico has witnessed persistent violence against public officials, particularly at the municipal level, amid the country’s long-running conflict involving powerful drug cartels and criminal groups.
Official figures show that nearly 100 mayors have been murdered since 2006, when drug-related violence escalated following the government’s crackdown on organised crime.
The latest killing comes less than a year after the fatal shooting of Carlos Manzo, the mayor of a municipality in the western state of Michoacán, who was killed during Day of the Dead celebrations in November, highlighting the continued security risks faced by elected officials across Mexico.
