Mexico’s government moved about 40,000 federal police, soldiers and marines into Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero and Michoacan states ahead of Sunday’s vote.
National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said the operation to dispatch federal police had started on Friday.
Mexicans in 16 states and the federal district voted on Sunday in the country’s biggest midterm election in history to select 500 representatives of the lower house of congress, nine governors, more than 300 mayors, and thousands more local office holders, DW reported.
In addition, rival factions of a self-defense militia clashed in southern Mexico, leaving at least 10 people dead amid tensions in the region on the eve of midterm elections.
Ramon Navarrete, president of the Guerrero state Human Rights Commission, said his agency had seen 10 bodies and that it was verifying reports of three more dead.
A state government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the death toll could rise to 16 in Xolapa, a village of some 500 people north of the Pacific resort of Acapulco.
The clash did not appear linked to Sunday’s congressional, gubernatorial and municipal elections. The state government said in a statement that the shootout involved rival factions of the United Front for Security and Development in Guerrero State.
Saturday’s shootout took place despite a special federal police and military deployment to protect the elections, especially in Guerrero and neighboring Oaxaca.
In both states, as well as Chiapas, radical teachers have ransacked offices of political parties, burned ballots and clashed with police while vowing to block Sunday’s vote.
