Two American citizens who were kidnapped in Mexico have been found dead while two more have been found alive, a governor has confirmed.
Américo Villarreal, the governor of Tamaulipas state, confirmed that officials had discovered two dead bodies, a wounded victim and another who is still alive.
Further details as to the condition of the surviving victims has not been shared.
The discovery came after an intelligence unit made up of the FBI and Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) and the Mexican Navy (Marina) was put together to track down the missing group and to find the kidnappers.
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Villarreal confirmed the deaths by phone during a morning news conference by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, saying details about the four abducted Americans had been confirmed by prosecutors.
"Of the four, two of them are dead, one person is wounded and the other is alive and right now the ambulances and the rest of the security personnel are going for them for give the corresponding support," Villarreal said.
It comes after it emerged one of the four Americans was in the country for a stomach operation.
Latavia 'Tay' McGee headed to Mexico on Wednesday for the tummy tuck, according to her friends and family, who confirmed she was joined with her cousin Shaeed Woodard, and friends Zindell Brown and Eric James Williams.
The friends wanted to split the driving responsibilities as they travelled from their homes in South Carolina to Mexico for Latavia's surgery.
The four were travelling on Friday in a white minivan with North Carolina licence plates when they came under fire shortly after entering the city of Matamoros from Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas near the Gulf coast, the FBI said in a statement Sunday.
"All four Americans were placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men," the FBI said.
The bureau offered a $50,000 (€56,000) reward for the victims' return and the arrest of the kidnappers.
Zalandria Brown of Florence, South Carolina, said she has been in contact with the FBI and local officials after learning that her younger brother, Zindell Brown, is one of the four victims.
"This is like a bad dream you wish you could wake up from," she said in a phone interview.
"To see a member of your family thrown in the back of a truck and dragged, it is just unbelievable."
Zalandria Brown said her brother, who lives in Myrtle Beach, and two friends had accompanied a third friend who was going to Mexico for a tummy tuck surgery.
A doctor who advertises such surgeries in Matamoros did not answer calls seeking comment.
Zalandria said the group was extremely close and they all made the trip in part to help split up the driving duties. They were aware of the dangers in Mexico, she added, and her brother had expressed some misgivings.
"Zindell kept saying, We shouldn't go down,"' Brown said.
A video posted to social media Friday showed men with assault rifles and tan body armour loading the four people into the bed of a white pickup in broad daylight.
One was alive and sitting up, but the others seemed either dead or wounded.
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