Thousands of people took to the streets on Thursday to protest the killing of two children in an attempted carjacking in Mexico’s troubled northwestern state of Sinaloa.

Mothers and children in school uniforms were among those calling for an end to months of cartel violence that has periodically shut down schools and businesses in the nation’s capital. Culiacán.

A group of children made banners with slogans such as “I want to live, not survive,” Agence France-Presse reported.

A small group of protesters forcibly entered the offices of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha, smashing them and demanding his resignation. Rocha, a close ally of former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has failed to control the violence in his state despite the deployment of troops.

“We understand people’s anger,” spokesman Feliciano Castro said a short time later, noting that federal authorities were investigating the killings.

Brothers Gael and Alexander Sarmiento, aged 12 and 9 respectively, and their father were fatally shot on Sunday when gunmen tried to steal their vehicle. Two other minors were injured. State authorities have suggested the vehicle’s tinted windows may have been a factor, but it’s unclear how.

The trip on Thursday was organized by the elementary school of the younger brother.

It was a major display of public anger for a city firmly held by the Sinaloa cartel. Culiacan has endured months of intense violence as two factions of the cartel have fought for control since the arrests in the US last year Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.

Zambada claimed he was ambushed Joaquin Guzman Lopezone of “El Chapo’s” sons, whom he said lured him onto a plane bound for the United States, where “El Chapo” himself is. serving a life sentence.

Early Thursday, an explosion in a supermarket parking lot in Culiacan damaged a monument dedicated to Edgar Guzman Lopez, the son of “El Chapo” who was killed in 2008. A riddled car was left nearby.

The ongoing war between the “Mayos” and “Chapitos” cartels has ended hundreds of dead people and hundreds of missing, according to the state prosecutor’s office. According to the US Department of Justice indictment, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electric shocks and hot chili peppers torment their rivals while some of their victims are “dead or fed alive to tigers.”

Bodies turned up all over the city, often left dumped on the streets or in cars hats on the head or pizza slices or boxes attached to them with knives. Pizzas and sombreros have become informal symbols of warring cartel factions, emphasizing the brutality of their warfare.

Ongoing violence is one of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s biggest challenges since taking office in October. Her administration is under pressure from US President Donald Trump to reduce the smuggling of the synthetic opioid fentanyl into the United States, of which the Sinaloa cartel is one of the world’s largest illicit producers.

Outrage over the children’s deaths has grown online this week, prompting Thursday’s march to be “more effusive, more emotional, very very sad and much more violent” than other protests in the capital, said Estefanía López of Culiacan Valiente, the collective that organized previous ones. peace marches.

“It took on a life of its own, I think a lot of people woke up,” López said. “The disgust… was such that people came out today.”

Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.