A blast killed two Mexican soldiers in the second deadly incident this week involving an improvised landmine in a crime-plagued western state, authorities said Wednesday.

According to the El Universal newspaper, the soldiers were trying to deactivate the device when it exploded.

The blast happened late on Tuesday in Buenavista in Michoacan, the state prosecutor’s office said.

A military source who did not want to be named said that troops were looking for similar devices believed to have been planted in the area.

On Monday, a blast caused by another improvised landmine killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others in the same region. Before the explosion, the soldiers had discovered the dismembered bodies of three people, officials said.

The device was suspected to have been planted by members of a local criminal group waging a turf war with a bigger drug cartel, Defense Minister Ricardo Trevilla said Tuesday.

Six other soldiers had been killed by similar improvised devices since late 2018, he said.

Mexico is plagued by widespread drug-related violence that has seen more than 450,000 people killed since the government deployed the army to combat trafficking in 2006, according to official figures.

In the only previous detailed report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at that time that a total of 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.

Overall, 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drone-carried and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in a news release last year.

Oklahoma is preparing to execute a man who killed a 10-year-old girl in what would be the nation’s 25th and final execution of the year.

Kevin Ray Underwood is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday, his 45th birthday, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Underwood, a former grocery store worker, was sentenced to die for killing Jamie Rose Bolin in 2006 as part of a cannibalistic fantasy.

Underwood admitted to luring Jamie into his apartment and beating her over the head with a cutting board before suffocating and sexually assaulting her. He told investigators that he nearly beheaded the girl in his bathtub before abandoning his plans to eat her.

Oklahoma uses a three-drug lethal injection process that begins with the sedative midazolam followed by a second drug that paralyzes the inmate to halt their breathing and a third that stops their heart.

During a hearing last week before the state’s Pardon and Parole Board, Underwood told the girl’s family he was sorry.

“I would like to apologize to the victim’s family, to my own family and to everyone in that room today that had to hear the horrible details of what I did,” Underwood said to the board via a video feed from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

The three board members in attendance at last week’s meeting all voted against recommending clemency.

Underwood’s attorneys had argued that he deserved to be spared from death because of his long history of abuse and serious mental health issues that included autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar and panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and various deviant sexual paraphilias.

His mother, Connie Underwood, tearfully asked the board to grant her son mercy.

“I can’t imagine the heartache the family of that precious girl is living with every single day,” Connie Underwood said. “I wish we understood his pain before it led to this tragedy.”

But several members of Bolin’s family asked the board to reject Underwood’s clemency bid. The girl’s father, Curtis Bolin, was scheduled to testify to the board but became choked up as he held his head in his hand.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” he said.

Prosecutors wrote in opposing Underwood’s clemency request that, “Whatever deviance of the mind led Underwood to abduct, beat, suffocate, sexually abuse and nearly decapitate Jamie cannot be laid at the feet of depression, anxiety or (autism).

“Underwood is dangerous because he is smart, organized and driven by deviant sexual desires rooted in the harm and abuse of others.”

In a last-minute request seeking a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court, Underwood’s attorneys argued that he deserves a hearing before the full five-member parole board and that the panel violated state law and Underwood’s rights by rescheduling its hearing at the last minute after two members of the board resigned.