As murders continue to climb in neighboring Sonora, Mexico, Mexican officials say one city in the southern part of the state is among those that have seen the sharpest rise in killings so far this year.

Cajeme, in southern Sonora, is among just 15 municipalities in Mexico that make up more than a quarter of murders in the country, Security Secretary Rosa Icela Rodríguez said this week.

While some of those areas have seen a decrease in murders in the first three months of this year compared to 2020, Cajeme and others have seen an increase.

"We had an average increase of 19% in the municipalities of León, Cajeme, Guadalajara, Acapulco and Chihuahua," Rodríguez said.

Of those, Cajeme has seen the greatest increase in killings in 2021 — up more than 40% from 92 in the first three months of 2020 to 133 during the same period this year.

An important trade region for the U.S., Cajeme is also home to Sonora’s second-largest city, Ciudad Obregon, which was ranked by a security-focused nonprofit in Mexico this week as the fourth most violent city in the world, with a murder rate of 101 per 100,000 people.

Other Sonoran cities are also seeing rising violence, including Caborca, where nine people were killed Sunday in a confrontation between suspected cartel members and law enforcement.