MEXICO CITY -- A gas tanker truck exploded on a highway north of Mexico City early on Tuesday, killing at least 19 people and injuring 36 others as a fireball tore through cars and homes.

Pablo Bedolla, mayor of the Mexico City suburb of Ecatepec, said 19 people died in the blast that engulfed early morning traffic.

Victor Rojas / AFP - Getty Images

Remains of a gas tanker are seen amid charred wreckage next to a highway north of Mexico City on Tuesday. The resulting explosion killed at least 19 people.

Television footage showed burned out vehicles and debris strewn all over the highway on the edge of the capital.

"It was a ball of fire which exploded as though they'd put a spotlight in the whole window," resident Carlos Gonzalez Silva, who was in a nearby house at the time of the blast, told Mexican radio. "We opened the door and it was like fire had blown through the whole of the garden."

Arturo Vilchis, head of emergency services in the State of Mexico, which abuts the capital, said 36 people were injured and that 13 of them had been hospitalized. Twenty homes and 16 vehicles were damaged by the explosion, he added.

Mexican radio station Formato 21 said a family of four, including two children aged 11 and 6, were among the dead.

In January, a massive blast at the headquarters of state oil giant Pemex in downtown Mexico City claimed dozens of lives.

Media reports said the gas tanker did not belong to Pemex. The state oil company said it would help the company involved in rescue efforts. 

Related:

• At least 33 dead in Mexico City skyscraper explosion
• Pemex blast caused by gas build-up, officials say

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen executed the sons of two prominent Mexican journalists in the northern city of Chihuahua, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office said on Sunday, and police found seven bodies dumped in a Mexico City suburb.

Alfredo Paramo, 20, and Diego Paramo, 21, were shot dead in Chihuahua early on Saturday after being chased through the streets by gunmen in a car, said spokesman Carlos Gonzalez.

They are the sons of well-known Mexican financial journalist David Paramo, who hosts a radio show, appears on TV Azteca and has a national newspaper column, and Martha Gonzalez, the editor of the local El Peso newspaper.

"We still don't know what they were doing there," Carlos Gonzalez said. "But this has nothing to do with the professional activities of their parents."

Mexican journalists are often targeted and killed by drug cartels for reporting on their activities. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based advocacy group, says 25 journalists have been murdered in Mexico since 1992.

In a separate incident, authorities found seven bodies dumped in a car in a Mexico City suburb on Sunday morning, a local police official said.

Two of the men were found naked. Police have identified three of the men, who ranged in ages from 14 to 42, the official said.

It appeared all seven men, who were found in the suburb of Ecatepec, had been shot, the official said.

Last year, police discovered eight corpses dumped in the down-at-the-heels suburb of 2 million people.

Ecatepec lies in the State of Mexico, which borders the capital to the north and where more than half the population of greater Mexico City lives.

Until 2011, Enrique Pena Nieto, now the president of Mexico, was the governor of the State of Mexico.

He has vowed to take a different tack than his presidential predecessor, Felipe Calderon, who sent in the troops to tackle the warring drug cartels. Pena Nieto has focused instead on stopping kidnapping and extortion.

Roughly 70,000 people have died in drug-related killings since 2006, when Calderon launched his military-led campaign. More than 4,200 have died in the first four months of Pena Nieto's term, a slower pace than early 2012.

Reuters

Relatives of inmates wait for information on their loved ones after a prison riot at La Pila prison in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosi.

MEXICO CITY — Thirteen people were killed and 65 injured in a prison riot Saturday in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, local officials said.

A fight broke out before daybreak among prisoners in a cell block in the La Pila prison in the state capital of San Luis Potosi, and state police re-established control by the morning, officials said.

Concepcion Tovar, head of the state’s prison system, told reporters that at least 100 inmates participated in the riot, which she blamed on a gang that had been harassing and robbing other inmates.

State officials said via social media that 13 people were killed and about 65 injured in the riot. They did not make clear whether all those killed or injured were inmates.

The deaths were caused by sharp objects and other improvised weapons, Tovar said. It was unclear whether the violence was linked to drug gangs, whose turf wars and battles over trafficking routes to the United States have spread across Mexico.

Deadly riots have repeatedly rocked the country’s overcrowded prisons, which house inmates from different gangs.

Killings linked to organized crime fell 14 percent to 4,249 in the first four months of the presidency of Enrique Pena Nieto, who took over in December and vowed to reduce the violence that has marred Latin America’s second-biggest economy.

Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the 2006-2012 term of President Felipe Calderon, who sent the military to fight drug cartels. An additional 27,000 are missing, according to official data.

This story was originally published on Sat Apr 27, 2013 8:41 PM EDT

A 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit western Mexico late Sunday, powerful enough to be felt 200 miles away in Mexico City but not causing any damage or injuries, according to preliminary reports.

The quake hit off the country’s western coast, according the U.S. Geological Survey. Local authorities have not indicated anyone has been hurt or and property has been damaged, Telemundo’s Mexico City Bureau reports.

Residents in Mexico City briefly ran outdoors when the shaking began, then returned to homes and businesses shortly after, a witness told Reuters.

On Saturday a deadly earthquake hit southwestern China, killing more than 200 people and leaving rescuers struggling to search for survivors.

Victor Ruiz Garcia / Reuters

Seven suspects in the killing of seven people in Cancun are presented to the media during a news conference on Sunday.

CANCUN, Mexico -- Six people were strangled to death and one decapitated in the southern Mexican tourist resort of Cancun on Sunday, the state's deputy attorney general said, in the latest mass killing to strike the city in the last few weeks.

Police found the bodies of the five men and two women in a shack in the outskirts of Cancun, a major tourist destination on Mexico's Caribbean coast, that has largely escaped the drug-related violence that has racked Acapulco, a faded tourist destination on the Pacific coast.

"It looks like the victims were independent drug dealers without any links to any specific cartel," said Juan Ignacio Hernandez, deputy attorney general of Quintana Roo state.

Last month six people died and five were injured after two men opened fire in a bar on the outskirts of Cancun.

In a separate incident, police on Sunday found the body of another man in Cancun who had been gagged, bound and wrapped in sheets.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has promised to put an end to the violence that exploded after his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, launched a military-led attack on the warring cartels.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007. 

A 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Oaxaca, Mexico, on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway as far away as Mexico City, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

Oaxaca is about 300 miles from Mexico City, where the tremors set off earthquake alarms, The Associated Press reported.

Staff at the Hotel Palacio Borghese in Oaxaca told NBC News that the quake set off the alarms, but that they did not feel it.

There were minor aftershocks in the city of Pinotepa Nacional on the Pacific Coast, but no reported injuries, Oaxaca Governor Gabino Cue tweeted on Tuesday.

The quake’s epicenter was about 20.5 miles deep, according to the USGS.

Reuters contributed to this report.

MEXICO CITY -- Two men armed with a machine gun and a handgun opened fire in a bar on the outskirts of the Mexican tourist resort of Cancun on Thursday, killing six people and wounding five, the office of the state's attorney general said.

Cancun, a major tourist destination on Mexico's Caribbean coast, has largely escaped the drug-related violence that has racked Acapulco, a faded tourist hot spot on the Pacific coast.

Last month, six Spanish women were raped by hooded gunmen who forced their way into the Acapulco beach house the women had rented.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to reduce the violence that soared after his predecessor, Felipe Calderon, launched an assault on drug cartels.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since 2007.

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A Belgian citizen shot to death in the Pacific resort of Acapulco near the site of the Mexican Open tennis tournament was a businessman, local prosecutors in Mexico said Sunday.

Saturday's killing was the second violent attack involving foreigners in Acapulco in less than three weeks. On Feb. 4, a band of masked gunmen invaded a beachfront home and raped six visiting Spanish women.

The Guerrero state district attorney's office identified the dead man as 59-year-old Jan Sarens, an executive with the family-owned Belgian firm Sarens, which supplies heavy transportation equipment for construction, mining and energy. It has offices in 50 countries, including Mexico.

Celia Gomez, an attorney for the firm's Mexico office, said it had not identified the body. Gomez said the company had a board member named Jans Sarens who lived in Mexico.

The man was shot to death Saturday afternoon in a shopping center parking lot, and his body was found outside a Mercedes Benz car with Mexico City plates.

Authorities in Guerrero state said in a statement that the killing was being investigated and the motive for the attack had still not been determined.

Violence and crime, much of it blamed on drug gangs, have grown worse in Acapulco in recent years.

The Associated Press

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Mexico security forces accused of abducting, murdering civilians

Mexicans weary of drug gangs form vigilante patrols

Yuri Cortez / AFP - Getty Images file

Relatives and human rights activists show a banner with pictures of missing people while marching during a protest marking the "International Week of the Detained-Disappeared" in May in Mexico City.

IGUALA, Mexico - Dozens of people were abducted and murdered by Mexican security forces over the past six years during a gruesome war with drug cartels, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday, urging President Enrique Pena Nieto to overhaul the military justice system. 

The rights group said that since 2007 it has documented 149 cases of people who were never seen again after falling into the hands of security forces, and that the government failed to properly investigate the "disappearances." 

"The result was the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S.-based group said. (Link: Human Rights Watch's full report).

The report was a grim reminder of the dark side of the war on drug cartels that killed an estimated 70,000 people during former President Felipe Calderon's six-year presidency. 

Human Rights Watch recommended reforming Mexico's military justice system and creating a national database to link the missing with the thousands of unidentified bodies that piled up during the military-led crackdown on drug cartels. 

The report also illustrates the obstacles that President Pena Nieto, who took office in December, faces in trying to stem the violence, restore order over areas of the country controlled by the drug cartels and end abuses by security forces. 

For nearly three years, 56-year-old shopkeeper Maria Orozco has sought to discover the fate of her son. She says he was abducted along with five colleagues by soldiers from the nightclub where they worked in Iguala, a parched town south of the Mexican capital. 

She says a grainy security video, submitted anonymously, shows the moment in 2010 when local soldiers rounded up the men. 

"We used to see the military like Superman or Batman or Robin. Super heroes," said Orozco. "Now the spirit of the whole country has turned against them." 

Hers was one of the cases illustrated in the Human Rights Watch report. 

27,000 disappeared?
Pena Nieto has vowed to take a different tack to his predecessor Calderon and focus on reducing violent crime and extortion rather than on going head to head with drug cartels. 

The government last month introduced a long-delayed law to trace victims of the drug war and compensate the families. It says it is moving ahead with plans to roll out a genetic database to track victims and help families locate the disappeared. 

"There exists, in theory, a database with more than 27,000 people on it," said Lia Limon, deputy secretary of human rights at Mexico's interior ministry. "It's a job that's beginning." 

Daniel Becerril / Reuters

Mexican soldiers take part in an operation to locate members of the music group Kombo Kolombia near Mina township in the state of Nuevo Leon on Jan. 27. Sixteen members of the band and other staff members was reported missing by their relatives, according to local media.

Still, impunity remains rife. The armed forces opened nearly 5,000 investigations into criminal wrongdoing between 2007 and 2012, but only 38 ended in sentencing, according to Human Rights Watch. 

In its report it describes the impact of the disappearances on victims' families, a daily reality for Ixchel Mireles, a 50-year-old librarian from the northern city of Torreon, whose husband Hector Tapia was abducted by men in federal police uniforms. 

Neither Mireles nor her daughter has heard from Tapia since that night in June 2010. 

"I want him to be alive, but the reality just destroys me," said Mireles. "I just want them to give him back, even if he is dead." 

'Bulletproof'
Since her husband's disappearance, Mireles has struggled financially, having lost his 40,000 pesos ($3,143) a month salary. She has moved her daughter to a cheaper university and can barely keep up payments on her house. 

"I now travel by foot," she said, noting that Mexico's social security system does not recognize the disappeared. 

Some family members of the disappeared have asked for soldiers guilty of rights abuses to be judged like civilians, a move Mexico's Supreme Court has approved. 

"To us it just seems that the military is untouchable," said Laura Orozco, 36, who says she witnessed her brother's military-led abduction. "They're bulletproof."

Related:

Church bricks up windows amid Mexico violence

Mexicans form vigilante patrols against drug gangs

From May 2012: Mexico's drug war -- No sign of 'light at the end of the tunnel'

Mexico has arrested six men who confessed to the rape of six female Spanish tourists in Acapulco, a crime that drew global attention to the popular Mexican resort.

"We have six detainees who have confessed, totally confessed," Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo said on Wednesday at a news conference in Acapulco.

Early on Feb. 4, hooded gunmen forced their way into a beach house the women rented, roughed up their seven male companions and raped the women.

Murillo said one of the suspects was apprehended on Tuesday, and the other five were detained overnight. Local officials said there was physical evidence that implicated the suspects.

Acapulco Mayor Luis Walton set off a media storm when he downplayed the seriousness of the attack, saying it could have happened "anywhere in the world," and that it hurt the image of the city, one of Mexico's most famous tourist destinations.

Acapulco is the biggest city in the state of Guerrero, which has been increasingly plagued by drug-related violence, prompting some exasperated residents in small towns to form "community police" forces.

The violence turned Acapulco into the murder capital of Mexico last year, with more than 1,000 murders reported by Mexican media in the city of approximately 800,000 people.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has vowed to reduce the violence that soared after his predecessor Felipe Calderon launched an assault on drug cartels.

Pena Nieto, who launched a program to boost tourism on Wednesday, pledged to create a new militarized police force and increase spending on security to cut crime.

"We will keep working to improve public security conditions, which, without a doubt, is a fundamental and indispensable condition for the development and promotion of our country," Pena Nieto said in the beach resort of Bahia de Banderas in the state of Nayarit.