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BAVISPE — Angry kin of nine American citizens massacred in a suspected gangland ambush in northern Mexico urged the government to accept U.S. help to destroy drug cartels that one grieving relative described as being “as bad or worse than ISIS.”

Funerals of the three mothers and six children began to be held in Mexico on Thursday after the government said they were caught in the crossfire of a territorial feud between the Juarez Cartel and its rival the Sinaloa Cartel on Monday.

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Photo by HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images

The victims belonged to three families of dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship born to breakaway Mormon communities founded in the north of Mexico several decades ago, and mourners came from thousands of miles to pay their last respects.

Sadness and anger gripped grieving relatives, and some urged Mexico’s leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to accept U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to help crush the gangs.