The nine American women and children killed in northern Mexico were victims of a territorial dispute between an arm of the Sinaloa Cartel and a rival gang, officials said on Wednesday, and may have been used to lure one side into a firefight.
Members of breakaway Mormon communities that settled in Mexico decades ago, the three families were ambushed as they drove along a dirt track in Sonora state, leading to U.S. President Donald Trump urging Mexico and the United States to "wage war' together on the drug cartels.
Accounts emerging of Monday morning's slayings detailed the heroism of a surviving boy who walked for miles to get help for his siblings, and heavy gunbattles in the remote hill area that lasted for hours into the night after the attack.