MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's government said on Monday it would investigate reports that federal police killed 16 unarmed people in two attacks in January, the latest allegations to raise the specter of abuses by Mexican security forces.
The weekend reports in three media outlets on the Jan. 6 killings in the troubled western state of Michoacan contrasted with an account by the federal government that several of the deaths could have been caused by stray bullets in a gunfight.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said he had asked the attorney general's office and the internal affairs department of the federal police to probe the killings in the city of Apatzingan, a flashpoint for violence in the state.
President Enrique Pena Nieto's image has been damaged by failings over security in recent months, including the alleged execution of suspected gang members by soldiers in June, and the apparent massacre of 43 students by drug cartel members in league with corrupt police in southwest Mexico in September.
The reports said those killed in Apatzingan, most of them members of vigilante groups formed to fight local drug gangs, had been protesting about their pay from the federal government, which brought them into a new rural police force last year.
Among the media to report on the killings was the website of Carmen Aristegui, a journalist whose team previously revealed that Pena Nieto and his wife had bought or used homes belonging to a government contractor, disclosures that stirred a conflict of interest scandal.
Aristegui later lost her radio job after conflict with her employer over her team's support for a new whistleblowing website. She accused the government of working to oust her, sparking fears that freedom of expression was under attack.
Just prior to publishing its report on the Apatzingan killings, the journalist's website Aristegui Noticias went offline for several hours and later said it had been the victim of a cyber attack. It was not clear how the attack occurred.
The Apatzingan reports seemed to be at odds with the explanation given by Alfredo Castillo, then federal security commissioner for Michoacan, who said on Jan. 12 some of the dead may have been killed by bullets fired by their own companions.
Castillo stepped down from his post in January.