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Mexico is investigating soldiers after video shows 5 men killed in Nuevo Laredo

Mexican prosecutors are investigating soldiers who were caught on security camera footage apparently executing five men.

In the video first released by Spanish newspaper El País, a pickup truck crashes into a fence in Nuevo Laredo in the northern state of Tamaulipas. Soldiers arrive and remove weapons and five men from the vehicle, kicking them and lining them up against the wall. The soldiers then appear to alter the scene, placing weapons next to the men, who were later found dead.

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called the killings “executions” and says they won't be permitted under his administration. Prosecutors are investigating the soldiers.

But the president has received frequent criticism for his increasing reliance on the military, and this is not an isolated complaint of human-rights abuses by Mexican soldiers. In Nuevo Laredo earlier this year, troops killed five reportedly unarmed men inside a vehicle.

Kendal Blust was a senior field correspondent at KJZZ from 2018 to 2023.