Twelve bodies were found on Thursday in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, local authorities said, attributing the killings to disputes between organized crime groups.

Guanajuato, a thriving industrial center that is also home to popular tourist destinations, is currently Mexico’s most violent state, according to official homicide statistics.

The 12 bodies were found within two hours in five locations in the city of Salamanca, according to the state prosecutor’s office, which is investigating the crime.

The victims — three women and nine men — were found on roads, bridges and avenues, their bodies bearing gunshot wounds and signs of torture, while one was dismembered, officials said.  

The state prosecutor’s office also said the perpetrators left messages in which a cartel claimed responsibility.

Messages are often left on victims’ bodies by drug cartels seeking to threaten their rivals or punish behavior they claim violates their rules.

The bodies were found less than 24 hours after gunmen attacked a residential center for people suffering from addictions in the same municipality, killing four.

“This month of October has started with very high crime rates here. That makes 16 people (murdered) so far,” Salamanca Mayor Cesar Prieto told reporters.

But he said the violence affecting the city was “a temporary issue” that flares up “when one group decides to attack another.”

In Guanajuato, two cartels, the Santa Rosa de Lima and the powerful Jalisco New Generation, are currently at war. 

Police, politicians and civilians have all been targeted in Guanajuato. In June, a baby and a toddler were among six members of the same family murdered in Guanajuato. In April, a mayoral candidate was shot dead in the street in Guanajuato just as she began campaigning.

Last December, 11 people were killed and another dozen were wounded in an attack on a pre-Christmas party in the state. Just days before that, the bodies of five university students were found stuffed in a vehicle on a dirt road Guanajuato.

The U.S. State Department urges American to reconsider traveling to Guanajuato. “Of particular concern is the high number of murders in the southern region of the state associated with cartel-related violence,” the department says in a travel advisory.

Hit by spiraling violence linked to organized crime, Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since December 2006, when a controversial military anti-drug operation was launched.

New President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that she will present her national security plan next Tuesday.

A fierce round of new Israeli airstrikes pummeled buildings in the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital overnight, with Israel’s military saying Friday that it had targeted another headquarters of the Iran-backed group Hezbollah. The strike came hours before Iran said its foreign minister had arrived in Beirut — the first visit by a senior Iranian official to Lebanon since the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah’s longtime leader, and Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack, for which Israel has vowed to retaliate.

Lebanese media suggested the target could have been a senior Hezbollah figure considered a potential successor to Nasrallah, who was assassinated in a similar Israeli strike in Beirut exactly one week ago.

NOTE: This article includes an image of a dead child that may disturb some readers.

The Reuters news agency cited Lebanon’s health ministry as saying Friday morning that at least 37 people had been killed and 151 others wounded by Israeli strikes in the country over the preceding 24 hours.

Five days of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon, near Israel’s northern border, and two weeks of airstrikes in that region and in southern Beirut — both Hezbollah strongholds — had killed more than 2,000 people, the health ministry said. More than 1 million people have been driven from their homes, including tens of thousands under Israel evacuation orders in almost 100 towns and villages near the border.

The blasts in Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight sent huge fireballs and plumes of smoke rising over the city. Lebanon’s state news agency said at least 10 consecutive strikes hit buildings in the southern suburb of Dahiyeh. 

The Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted the “Hezbollah central intelligence headquarters,” but the country’s Army Radio network said the IDF was still working to determine whether any senior members of the group had been killed in the strikes.

Israel stepped up its assault on Hezbollah — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations — two weeks ago, vowing to push the well-entrenched group’s fighters and weapons back far enough from the border to stop a near-daily hail of rockets and drones targeting Israel. 

Hezbollah started launching those attacks in support of its ideological ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, the day after Hamas sparked the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The IDF says Hezbollah militants have fired over 10,000 rockets across the border since Oct. 8, 2023. The vast majority of them have been intercepted by Israel’s advanced missile defense systems.

Among those killed in Lebanon this week was U.S. national Kamal Ahmed Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan. His family has said he was a volunteer who was killed in an airstrike in southern Lebanon.

The White House said in a statement that it was “deeply saddened” by Jawad’s death.

The U.S. government has warned Americans not to travel to Lebanon since mid-September, and urged any citizens in the country to leave via commercial travel routes. The government has been helping to organize seats on flights out of Lebanon for American citizens, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said earlier this week, as other nations book charter flights and make plans for potential evacuations.

Another Israeli airstrike cut off a main highway connecting Lebanon and neighboring Syria, Lebanese state media said Friday. Tens of thousands of people fleeing the fighting have crossed into Syria since Israel started expanding its military operations in Lebanon.

An Israeli military spokesperson said earlier that Hezbollah had been trying to move military equipment across the border into Lebanon via the highway that was reportedly struck on Friday. Hezbollah is believed to have obtained many of its weapons from Iran via Syria, according to The Associated Press.

Lebanese officials have said most of the roughly half dozen crossings between Lebanon and Syria remain open. 

The skyrocketing casualties are pushing Lebanon’s already-frail health care system to the brink. At least 40 paramedics and firefighters have been killed in the Israeli strikes over the past three days alone, according to Lebanon’s health minister. That includes about half a dozen medics killed in a strike late Wednesday night that hit a central Beirut office of the Health Society, a group of civilian first responders affiliated with Hezbollah.

The rapidly escalating violence in Lebanon comes weeks after Israel announced a deliberate shift of its military focus to that northern front, but the IDF has continued its operations in the Palestinian territories, too. 

An IDF airstrike overnight in Tulkarem, in the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, killed 18 people, according to Palestinian officials. Israel has carried out a number of significant raids in the West Bank, including in Tulkarem, over the last year, usually saying the targets are Hamas fighters or commanders.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said at least 678 Palestinians were killed by Israeli military operations in the West Bank between Oct. 7, 2023 and the end of September 2024, while 12 others were killed by Israeli settlers.

President Biden has backed Israel’s right to respond “in proportion” to Iran’s recent missile attack, but he’s also said more must be done to prevent the close ally’s fight with Iran’s so-called proxy groups from spreading into a wider war in the Middle East. Despite repeated U.S. calls for cease-fires, however, neither Israel, nor Hezbollah or Hamas, have shown any inclination to back down yet.

Former President Barack Obama will soon begin campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris. He is set to embark on a blitz across the battleground states, with several events in the last month before Election Day. 

The former president will kick off his campaign efforts next Thursday, Oct. 10, in the Pittsburgh area. It’s unclear if Harris will appear with him. 

Obama has been a staunch supporter of Harris since she joined the top of the Democratic ticket, officially endorsing her just days after President Biden exited the race. Obama vowed to do anything he could to help Harris defeat former President Donald Trump. 

“Kamala Harris won’t be focused on her problems, she’ll be focused on yours,” Obama said in an address at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. “A president, she won’t just cater to her own supporters and punish those who refuse to kiss the ring or bend the knee. She’ll work on behalf of every American. That’s who Kamala is.”

Harris and Obama have yet to appear together this cycle, and while it is not yet known if they will before Election Day, their relationship stems back to when the former president was seeking a Senate seat in Illinois. Harris also campaigned for Obama during his 2008 presidential run.

Obama’s first campaign event will take place in one of the most contested battleground states. In 2020, President Biden won the Keystone state by less than 81,000 votes, flipping a state that Trump won in 2020. 

Harris herself has visited Pennsylvania more than 13 times in 2024, and seven times since launching her presidential bid. Surrogates like her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have also campaigned in Pennsylvania. 

The latest CBS News polling shows the presidential race remains a tight contest, with Harris up four points nationally over Trump, 52% to 48% among likely voters, and with a slight edge of 51% to 49% in the battleground states.