Seven alleged hitmen were shot dead by security forces in a separate incident in Morelos.
In an age of mobile telephones, gang leaders can remote-control hitmen from anywhere they like.
Early on Monday, police and suspected hitmen exchanged fire near Temixco, close to the city of Cuernavaca.
At the same time, gangs regularly alert the media to spectacular killings carried out by their hitmen.
FORBES: More Journalists Killed in Mexico’s Drug War than in Afghanistan
Tommy is accused of having hired two hitmen to kill the judge in a drive-by shooting last July.
LulzSec is like a Wikileaks cybersquad of hitmen, but so far has not uncovered and released any damaging information.
In 2011, a group of Zeta hitmen attacked a ranch, decapitating 27 people.
FORBES: Political Risk Analysis: Guatemala and Mexico's OTHER Border
Crime and vigilante justice are rampant, hitmen are cheap, militias abound and a Muslim insurgency rumbles on in the south.
Mr Hutomo was given 15 years, a fraction of the maximum possible life sentence, for paying two hitmen to gun down the judge.
Residents have gotten used to stories about cartel hitmen leaving the brutalized bodies of their rivals in the street with threatening notes.
FORBES: Looking Back at 2012: A Year of #Mexico #Drugwar Tweets
Last year Macau's security chief, Manuel Monge, blithely reassured tourists worried about being caught in gangland shoot-outs that the hitmen never missed their mark.
In fact, the hitmen only motivated Xiao to confront his father.
FORBES: Son Plays Online Game Too Much, So Father Hires Virtual Hitmen
Taxi driver Zola Tongo has already claimed in a plea bargain that Mr Dewani offered him cash to arrange for two hitmen to ambush his vehicle.
The case of Shrien Dewani, a British man accused of hiring hitmen to kill his wife on their South African honeymoon, cast the country's criminal justice system in an unflattering light.
Dewani is accused of hiring a crew of hitmen to kill his wife, Anni Dewani, 28, during a taxi ride in Cape Town, South Africa, while they were on honeymoon in 2010.
CNN: UK court halts extradition of honeymoon killing suspect
Major Peter Mead said it was difficult to imagine how it could have been bettered but he did concede that professional hitmen usually fired more than one shot to make sure of a kill.
They claim the movement now has only about a dozen experienced hitmen on the loose, along with about 50 guerrillas and 350-400 people, spread around Spain, France and Latin America, who give them vital succour.
When you piece all these elements together, the ABC news piece increasingly looking like journalists taking on the role of hitmen in an academic vendetta, one in which they are clueless about the underlying data but absolutely certain that the conventional wisdom is right.
FORBES: ABC News Attacks Scientist Who Exposed Bias In Obesity Research
应用推荐