Over 4,000 residents flee a town in southern Mexico after armed gangs start shooting, burn homes

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Over 4,000 residents have fled a town in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas after armed gangs shot up the town and burned many homes last week. Residents recounted spending days trapped in their homes before army troops and state police showed up over the weekend to allow them to flee. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledged Monday that authorities have had to set up camps for displaced people in neighboring towns. López Obrador depicted the assault “as a conflict between the very same the people” of the town of Tila. But observers said criminal and political interests were behind the clash, the biggest mass displacement in Chiapas in two decades.