The tourism secretary for the Mexican state of Culiacan has been murdered by gunmen. Antonio Ibarra Salgado and his driver died in an ambush while travelling in the secretary’s official vehicle on the streets of the state capital.

Sinaloa is home to some of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, including the gang run by Arturo Beltran Leyva, who was killed last week during a shootout with marines in the central Mexican city of Cuernavaca.

Rolando Bon Lopez, assistant prosecutor for Sinaloa state, said that police are trying to determine whether his killing was drug-related. Ibarra is survived by a wife and seven children. Sinaloa, a mountainous, largely agricultural state, was the birthplace of Mexico’s leading kingpins.

Angulo Cordova took part in the Dec. 16 military operation in Cuernavaca that resulted in the deaths of the drug kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva and six of his armed retainers. Mexican President Felipe Calderon denounced the “cowardly and despicable” attack on Angulo Cordova’s family. “These reprehensible deeds are a sample of the lack of scruples with which organized crime operates, attacking innocent lives, and they can only reinforce our desire to banish this singular cancer from the life of society,” he said.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence, with powerful cartels battling each other and the security forces in a war for control of smuggling and distribution routes. The drug war is blamed for more than 16,000 deaths in the past three years, with the 2009 death toll at roughly 6,500.