13 killed in ambush in violent Mexican state

Culiacan: Gunmen ambushed a packed pick-up truck in northwestern Mexico, killing nine men and four women in a region plagued by drug cartel violence, authorities said on Sunday.

The attack took place yesterday in a rural community of the municipality of San Ignacio at the border of the states of Sinaloa and Durango, prosecutors said.

"It was an ambush. They were waiting for them and when they were close they fired with AK-47 rifles," an official at the Sinaloa prosecutor's office told AFP.

The remote mountain region straddling the states of Sinaloa and Durango is where powerful drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman hid after escaping from prison in July.

Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel, was recaptured in the Sinaloa seaside city of Los Mochis on January 8. One man who was wounded in yesterday's attack was taken to a hospital while another 36-year-old person was arrested for carrying a high-caliber firearm.

San Ignacio Mayor Amado Loaiza Perez said the town is a transit point for drug gangs that hide in the mountains.

More than 100,000 people have died or gone missing in a decade of drug violence in Mexico.