A wave of killings and kidnappings in a northern Mexican city has left residents scared to leave their houses during an internal cartel war set off by the US arrests of two high-level drug traffickers.
Hundreds of heavily armed special forces have been deployed in and around Culiacán, Sinaloa, over the past three weeks in which more than 90 people have been killed and another 90 kidnapped, according to local media.
Last week soldiers swept through an upmarket shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon, sending diners in a ramen restaurant to the floor, videos on social media show. Customers in a café dived behind the counter before a fierce, hours-long gun and grenade battle erupted one block away.