• ‘Armed civilians’ shoot state officers executing a judicial order
• Michoacán state has seen recent spike in violence

At least 13 police officers were killed and three injured on Monday by gunmen in the western state of Michoacán, a region where violence attributed to organized crime has spiked in recent months.

The state police officers had gone to a home in the town of El Aguaje in Aguililla municipality to enforce a judicial order when “several armed civilians fired on them”, Michoacán’s state security department said in a statement.

• Tests continue on contents of 119 plastic bags found in Jalisco
• Clandestine burial sites have become common during drug war

Forensic examiners in western Mexico have pieced together 41 bodies from bags full of body parts found in a well earlier this month.

The examiners in the western state of Jalisco said tests were continuing on the grisly contents of 119 plastic bags dumped in a well near the city of Guadalajara. Authorities had to call in backhoes to fully excavate the pit.

Gang dispute believed to be behind blaze at venue in Gulf coast city of Coatzacoalcos

An attack on a bar in the Mexican city of Coatzacoalcos has left 23 people dead and 13 injured.

The assailants started a fire that ripped through the bar, killing eight women and 15 men. There was no immediate information on the condition of the injured.

Shocking act in Tepexco is just one example of wider malady blighting countries from Bolivia to Brazil

Socorro Muñoz fled indoors as the laurel-lined square outside her shop became a public execution ground one sunny afternoon in early August.

“I didn’t want to see,” the 62-year-old storekeeper explained as she relived the moment a tide of Latin American lynchings swept into Tepexco’s picturesque Plaza de la Constitución, leaving seven alleged kidnappers dead.