Three Mexicans were shot dead and five were missing after a mass kidnapping by gunmen toting assault rifles in a Gulf Coast fishing village.
A group of 20 heavily armed men swept into the village of Soto la Marina, 140 miles south of the border with Texas, in a convoy of trucks and rounded up 19 local people from three homes in the village last weekend.
It was not clear why they were kidnapped.
The local police chief said the bodies of three of the men seized in the kidnapping - the former mayor of the town and his two sons - were later found nearby with a single, execution-style shot to the head.
A news embargo was in place in the days immediately after the kidnapping while police launched a hunt for the missing villagers. Newspapers quoted prosecutors in Tamaulipas state as saying that the kidnapping was likely carried out by an organized criminal band.
The state is home to several violent drug cartels currently locked in a bloody battle for control of lucrative smuggling routes to south Texas.