One country is home to nine of the 10 cities with the highest homicide rates in the world.
The country is unlikely to surprise many, with a fearsome reputation as one of the key nodes in the international drug trade. Despite this, the near-total domination of the top ten is astonishing.
That country is the Central American state of Mexico, which sews up the listings so completely that only one other country has a city on the top 10 list as per data from 2022. That other country is the US, with the city of New Orleans, which came in eighth place with 70.6 homicides per 100,000 residents.
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Some of the Mexican cities on the list blow this rate out of the water, but none more so than the Western region of Colima which has a rate of 181.9 people per 100,000 residents. Next on the list is Zamora in the centre of the country, which has a rate of 177 homicides per 100,000.
The homicide rates reported in this list exclude cities from countries that are at war and were compiled by Mexico City-based advocacy group called El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal. The group has been tracking murder rates since 2013.
Coming third in the list is Ciudad Obregón, followed by Zacatecas, Tijuana, Celaya, Uruapan, Ciudad Juárez and Acapulco.
Of the top 50 cities in the world for homicides, 17 are in Mexico which is in first place. In second is Brazil with 10 and the United States with eight. Colombia is in fourth place with six and South Africa.
Writing at the time of the release of the 2022 data, El Consejo Ciudadano para la Seguridad Pública y la Justicia Penal said: "For the sixth consecutive year, a Mexican city appears as the most dangerous on the planet, according to the ranking of the Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice.
"With a rate of 181.94 murders per hundred thousand inhabitants during 2022, Colima became the most violent city in the world."
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