An American couple has died while visiting a part of western Mexico that has been plagued by violence

A couple from the United States was shot and killed while visiting the western state of Mexico Michoacanwhich has been invaded for violent crime wave.

the prosecutor’s office said in a statement On Thursday, the couple – identified as Gloria A., 50 years old, and Rafael C., 53 years old – were traveling in a pick-up truck in the municipality of Angamacutiro on Wednesday when they were shot dead.

The woman died at the scene and the man died from his injuries a short time later at a local hospital, the statement added.

It was not immediately clear why the couple, who were married, were attacked.

A spokeswoman for the prosecution said Reuters that the woman, who had obtained US citizenship, and the man, born in the US to Mexican parents, had family and a home in Angamacutiro.

Rising violence, much of it related to drug trafficking, has seen more than 450,000 people killed in Mexico since 2006, when the government launched a crackdown on organized crime.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaumwho took office in October, has ruled out starting a new “war on drugs”, as the controversial program was known.

He has pledged to follow his predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy of using social policy to address the causes of crime.

Drug gangs and cartels have long infiltrated, intimidating or bribing local officials to work for them, often going so far as to cut the municipal budget or use local police forces to warn them or protect them from federal raids. Sometimes the police officers themselves profit from the drug trade.

Speaking out about cartel corruption can have deadly consequences. Earlier this year, a business leader in the state of Tamaulipas was shot dead after he complained in television interviews about extortion by cartels. A few weeks earlier, a prominent businesswoman who had made similar complaints was murder in the northern border state of Baja California.