A mayoral candidate who went missing this week in northern Mexico has been found shot dead, officials have said.
Jaime Orozco, a candidate with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that has governed Mexico for most of the past century, was reported missing on Monday in the town of Guadalupe y Calvo in Chihuahua state.
Officials yesterday said Orozco's bullet-riddled body was found somewhere in the foothills of Chihuahua, one of Mexico's most violence-prone states.
Local and regional elections are to be held next month in Chihuahua and several other states.
At least 30 mayors have been assassinated over the past half-dozen years in Mexico, under the grip of drug violence that has claimed some 70,000 lives.
