File photo of a member of the Mexican police. Representational purposes only.
Mexico city: Mexican authorities arrested five men on Sunday in connection with the kidnapping and murder of 10 workers employed by a Canadian mining company in the country's northwest region.
The workers, all Mexicans, were kidnapped at gunpoint on January 23 from a silver mining project belonging to Vancouver-based Vizsla Silver in the violence-plagued state of Sinaloa.
The bodies of the 10 men, two of whom were engineers and one a geologist, were later found buried in clandestine graves.
Mexico's defense ministry said the suspects belonged to a faction of the fearsome Sinaloa cartel. It identified one suspect as Jesus Abraham.
In June, Mexico announced the arrest of another suspect, identified as Gabriel N., alias Gabito, a hitman for the same faction.
The government said the workers were mistaken for members of a rival faction of the Sinaloa cartel, which has been ripped apart by internecine fighting since September 2024.
According to the government, the suspects worked for a faction controlled by the sons of jailed druglord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
The Sinaloa cartel has been designated a terrorist organization by Washington.
