Two of four Americans kidnapped by gunmen on Friday after traveling to northeastern Mexico have been found dead and the two survivors have returned to the United States, US and Mexican officials said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. .

The survivors and two bodies were found by Mexican security forces early Tuesday in a wooden house southeast of the border city of Matamoros, said Américo Villarreal, the governor of Tamaulipas, the state where the four crossed from Texas.

Authorities are still investigating how the two Americans died, and a Mexican official said the most likely explanation for the group’s kidnapping is that they were mistaken for someone else.

One of the two American survivors suffered a non-life-threatening gunshot wound to the leg. The second survivor is a woman. She was not injured, Villarreal said at the press conference.

According to him, a 33-year-old Mexican woman died during the kidnapping, probably from a stray bullet.

A 24-year-old man, who was guarding them in the country, was detained on the spot. Before they were found, the four were moved to several locations in the area, including a local clinic, to try to throw law enforcement off their trail, Villarreal said.

“We are very sorry that this happened in our country, and we express our condolences to the families of the victims, to their friends, to the people of the United States,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said at an earlier news conference.

Mexican officials have vowed to work with the US to find the criminals, but the kidnappings have sharply highlighted concerns about gang violence in Mexico and sparked angry reactions from US politicians who have criticized Mexico’s crime-fighting efforts.

The four Americans were in a white van when they entered Matamoros on Friday. According to officials, they were soon shot by armed men and then forced to get into another car.

A video circulating on social media, allegedly taken during the abduction, shows a group of men wearing bulletproof vests and holding guns leading the woman to a white pickup truck. She was pushed back before the men dragged the two sprawling figures inside.