SANTA ELENA, Guatemala, May 15 (UPI) -- Assailants descended on a remote jungle ranch in Guatemala, killing 27 people, including 25 who were beheaded, a military spokesman said Sunday.
Army Col. Rony Urizar said the ruthless attack occurred Saturday night and into early Sunday at a ranch in the Peten region, McClatchy Newspapers reported.
Two of the victims were women.
Moises Ical, a national civil police spokesman in Santa Elena, said the massacre was tied to drug trafficking, and possibly the work of the powerful drug gang Los Zetas.
"We have neither the personnel nor the means to fight these drug traffickers," Ical told McClatchy Newspapers in a telephone interview.
The Guatemalan army was hunting down the assailants, who presumably were traveling in several vehicles northward toward Mexico.
