Guadalajara (Mexico) (AFP) - A Mexican federal lawmaker was killed and burned after being abducted in broad daylight, authorities confirmed Wednesday, shocking his ruling party amid government assurances that violence is down.

Deputy Gabriel Gomez Michel was driving to the airport in the western state of Jalisco on Monday when a clutch of cars intercepted his sport-utility vehicle, authorities said.

The 49-year-old former pediatrician's body was found early Tuesday in the neighboring state of Zacatecas inside the charred remains of his SUV, alongside the burned corpse of his assistant.

The Jalisco prosecutor's office said forensic experts positively identified the bodies of Gomez Michel and Heriberto Nunez Ramos.

In a statement, the office said authorities were investigating who was behind the "double homicide."

The chief prosecutor of Zacatecas, Arturo Nahle, said no bullets were found on the bodies or the car and that the corpses were too badly burned to tell how they were killed.

The murder resembled the "modus operandi" of gangs, Nahle said, telling Radio Formula "it is a classic execution by organized crime."

Security cameras captured the abduction, showing cars flanking the lawmaker's SUV as a man in a red shirt points at the car's window on the road outside Guadalajara.

Gomez Michel's wife had called the authorities to report his disappearance.

His home state Jalisco is a bastion of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel. Nahle said the Gulf Cartel is present in Zacatecas.

Officials said the lawmaker had not received threats before his killing.

Local politicians have often been the targets of attacks or threats during Mexico's drug war, with at least 30 mayors killed since 2006, but attacks against federal lawmakers are less common.

PRI lawmaker Moises Villanueva was killed in 2011. El Universal newspaper documented attacks against five other federal legislators since 2006, and a foiled plot against two others last year.

In March 2013, Jalisco's tourism secretary was shot dead in his SUV in Zamora, a popular tourist spot on the Pacific coast.

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Some 80,000 people have been killed since troops were deployed to crack down on drug cartels in 2006.





- 'Sorrow and indignation' -





Gomez Michel, who was mayor of El Grullo in 2010-2012, belongs to President Enrique Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Pena Nieto said Tuesday that murders had slipped by 29 percent in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2012, the year he took office.

Gomez Michel's murder stunned the political class.

"It is difficult to express the sorrow and indignation that the murder of our colleague Gabriel Gomez Michel has left," said Manlio Beltrones, coordinator of the PRI's congressional deputies.

Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong indicated that federal prosecutors would take over the case.

Javier Oliva, a politics and security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the fact that a congressman was abducted and killed "demonstrates the vulnerable situation that some parts of the republic face" despite the drop in homicides.