Killing of Mexican public workers reflects cartel brutality

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The killing of two utility workers in northern Mexico may be related to the scorched-earth tactics of warring drug cartels. Drug cartels in Mexico have increasingly involved civilian communities in their battles, isolating towns that don’t support them by cutting off roads and electricity, or forcing residents to leave. On Tuesday, assailants attacked two trucks carrying workers from the state-owned electrical power company. Two workers escaped and two were killed. On Thursday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the area in the northern border state of Sonora was the scene of fighting between gangs, who had cut electricity to two villages as “reprisals.”