MEXICO CITY

Armed assailants on Tuesday gunned down two close aides to Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada in what authorities call an unprecedented attack on the capital’s government.

Ximena Guzman, her personal secretary, and Jose Munoz, a political advisor, were targeted and followed by armed men on a motorcycle through one of the city’s main avenues, in what appears to have been a direct coordinated assault, said police. Both were gunned down at close range.

The city's Citizen Security Ministry and the attorney general’s office have launched investigations to determine the motive for the attack and to identify those responsible.

“I feel deeply saddened by the loss of Ximena and Pepe, with whom I shared many years of hopes and struggles to transform … Mexico City,” Brugada told a press conference shortly after the incident.

“In the city government, we are deeply shocked and mourning the loss of two beloved colleagues,” she said, adding: “The case is being pursued with the same rigor and commitment with which our institutions operate every day.”

While officials from the city government had been targeted in the past, like Mexico’s sitting security chief Omar Garcia Harfuch, who survived a 2020 armed attack by alleged members of the New Generation Jalisco Cartel, the double murder of Ximena and Pepe is being called an unprecedented event.