An explosion killed two Mexican soldiers in the second fatal incident this week including an unprepared land mine in a a crime-ravaged western stateauthorities said Wednesday.
According to El Universal newspaper, the soldiers were trying to disable the device when it exploded.
The explosion happened late Tuesday in Buenavista in Michoacánthe state prosecutor's office said.
A military source who did not want to be named said that soldiers were looking for similar devices believed to have been planted in the area.
On Monday, an explosion caused by another unexploded land mine killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others in the same area. Before the explosionthe soldiers had found the bodies of three people, officials said.
The device was suspected to have been planted by members of a local criminal group fighting a turf war with a larger drug cartel, Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla said on Tuesday.
Six other soldiers have been killed by similar improvised explosive devices since late 2018, he said.
Mexico has been plagued by widespread drug-related violence that has killed more than 450,000 people since the government deployed the army to fight human trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.
In the same detail before report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at the time that 42 soldiers, police and suspects were injured by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.
In total, 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drone and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in a press release Last year.
