Martha Laura Mendoza, mayor of the town of Tepalcatepec, was murdered together with her husband, Michoacan public prosecutor’s office wrote on X.

Mendoza was a member of president Claudia Sheinbaum’s left-wing Morena party.

The prosecutor’s office gave no details of the attack, which it termed a femicide, saying only that it took place in the town.

Former Tepalcatepec mayor Guillermo Valencia, leader of the opposition PRI party in Michoacan, said on X his sources told him that Mendoza and her husband were attacked “as they were leaving their home”.

Michoacan, Mexico’s largest avocado producer, is home to the port of Lazaro Cardenas and several tourist sites.

It has been plagued by gang violence for nearly two decades.

Mendoza’s killing comes just two days after gunmen stormed the office of the mayor of San Mateo Pinas, Lilia Garcia, in Oaxaca state and killed her and a member of her staff.

Dozens of local officials in Mexico have been targeted by organised crime groups in recent years, especially in areas where powerful drug trafficking gangs operate.

The violence spread recently to the capital, Mexico City, where two aides to mayor Clara Brugada were shot dead while travelling in rush-hour traffic last month.

Criminal violence, most of it linked to drug trafficking, has claimed around 480,000 lives since Mexico’s government launched a war on drug cartels in 2006.

More than 120,000 others have gone missing.