Prosecutors in Quintana Roo state, which also has resort towns such as Cancun and Tulum, said the man and woman were found dead Monday at a hotel or condominium in the troubled resort, and a third was reported injured. There was no immediate information on their names or cities of origin. “Global Affairs Canada is aware of the deaths of two Canadian citizens in Mexico,” the ministry said in a statement. Playa del Carmen has been hit by a number of cases of violence involving foreigners, most recently in January, when two Canadians were killed at a local resort, apparently due to debts between international drug and arms trafficking gangs. In March, police in Playa del Carmen found the bodies of four men dumped near a house. The fact that the corpses were left together in the bushes next to an access road suggests a gang-type murder. There have been a series of brutal acts of violence elsewhere along the resort-rich coast of Mexico’s Riviera Riviera, the jewel of the country’s tourism industry. In November, a shooting on the beach in Puerto Morelos, north of Playa del Carmen, left two suspected drug traffickers dead. Authorities said 15 gunmen were from a gang apparently questioning control of drug sales there. In late October, further south in the loose destination of Tulum, two tourists – a California-born Indian-born travel blogger and a German – were caught in the crossfire of rival drug traffickers and killed.
