The world's 40 most dangerous and deadly cities have been revealed with a North American area taking top spot.
Plagued by gang violence, vicious murders, shootings and poverty, the list of deadliest cities has been compiled based on homicide rates, measuring the number of homicides per 100,000 people.
In the rankings, annually provided by Mexican organisation The Citizen Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice (CCPSCJ), it was proven that Mexico was the deadliest country of all.
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Out of the top 10 most violent cities, nine of those were Mexican, with Colima topping the list overall – marking the sixth consecutive year the city has been ranked the world's most dangerous.
Cities in South and Central America, as well as the United States, also dominated the list, with New Orleans being the only city outside Mexico to make the top 10.
Thirteen of the cities are from South America, meanwhile, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, which are all in South Africa also made the list. There was also one city each from Jamaica and Haiti.
Most of the cities are facing the same issues – dense and rapidly expanding populations, districts rife with poverty and gang violence.
These issues have resulted in the average homicide rate across the top 40 cities on the list being 10 times as high as the rest of the world at 64.55 per 100,000 people.
In the deadliest city, Mexico's Colima, there was a horrific 182 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022.
In total, the city of just over 330,000 people saw 601 people intentionally killed, which was surprisingly an improvement on 2021 when the city had 196 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
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Things only seem to be going from bad to worse for the city, as in January 2023 it was reported that 70 people were victims of homicide just that month.
The city's crime is dominated by four rival cartel gangs: Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), Sinaloa, Santa Rosa de Lima, and Cárteles Unidos.
Between them they regularly carry out assassinations, kidnappings, extortion and robberies, killing anyone who they think stands in their way.
Colima isn't the only Mexican region that faces these problems as eight other Mexican cities made up the top 10 of the CCPSCJ's list.
Those included were Zamora, Ciudad Obregón, Zacatecas, Tijuana, Celaya, Juárez, Uruapan and Acapulco, with six more Mexican cities – Irapuato, Cuernavaca, Cancun, Chihuahua, Morelia and León – also included in the top 40.
Meanwhile, over in the States – the only other country to be listed in the top 10 – issues tend to stem from gun violence.
The number of gun-related deaths in the United States has risen significantly in the last two decades, with gun homicides in particular rising sharply in recent years.
In New Orleans, 97 percent of homicides in 2022 were from gun violence, with a shocking homicide rate of 71 per 100,000 people.
It has quickly become the murder capital of the States with the highest homocide rate since before the year 2000.
Criminologists and police officials believe that the recent spike in violence is due to stress from the Covid-19 pandemic, police forces pulling back after racial justice protests and the proliferation of guns.
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