Mexico's Drug War - Page 9

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A drug cartel has used a car bomb for the first time in Mexico's decades-long fight against traffickers, setting a deadly trap against federal police in a city across the border from Texas, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez said Friday.

Mayor Jose Reyes said federal police have confirmed to him that a car bomb was used in the attack that killed three people Thursday.

It was the first time drug cartel have used explosives to attack Mexican security forces, marking an escalation in the country's already raging drug war.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico – Gunmen stormed a party in northern Mexico on Sunday and massacred 17 people, authorities said.

The gunmen arrived at the party in Torreon in several cars and opened fire without saying a word, the Coahuila state Attorney General's Office said in statement. At least 18 people were wounded.

Several of the victims were young and some were women, but their identities and ages had not yet been determined.

Investigators had no suspects or information on a possible motive.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene, most of them from .223 caliber weapons.

Coahuila is among several northern states that has seen a spike in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

MEXICO CITY – Authorities found the remains of at least 38 people in a series of pits and scattered on the ground at a suspected drug-gang dumping site near the industrial hub of Monterrey in northern Mexico, an official said Friday.

Investigators were using heavy equipment to search for more bodies at the rural site outside Mexico's third-largest city, local media said. Photographs showed charred spots on the soil suggesting some bodies may have been partially burned.

Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said officials still had to inspect three more pits for bodies. He said 36 of the victims found so far are men and two are women.

Luis Vazquez Barragan, known as 'El 20,' an alleged member of the Mexican drug gang 'La Linea,' is shown to the press by police, along with weapons allegedly seized from him, in Mexico City, Sunday July 25, 2010. According to police, Vazquez was detained in the border city of Ciudad Juarez during a raid on Friday July 23, 2010.

MEXICO CITY – Mexican prosecutors say guards at a prison let inmates out and lent them guns to massacre 17 people at a party, then allowed them to return to their cells.

Sunday's announcement from the federal attorney general's office represents a shocking revelation about the July 18 shooting in the northern city of Torreon, where the victims included women and children.

The director and two other officials at the prison in Durango state have been put under a form of house arrest while investigations continue.

Prosecution spokesman Ricardo Najera says there is evidence the director has given inmates permission to carry out drug-related killings in neighboring Coahuila state. He says the same method may have been used in two other shootings.

On July 28 2010 09:16 vnlegend wrote:
Wow this is terrible. For the cartels to get that big and powerful, there must be corruption at very high levels. Otherwise I don't see how they can survive against the government and the military for this long and cause so much damage. With corruption so entrenched in the government, what can the Mexican people do?

MEXICO CITY – One of the top three leaders of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel died in a gunfight with soldiers Thursday, ending the long run of a mysterious capo considered a founder of the country's massive methamphetamine trade.

The death of Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel near the city of Guadalajara is the biggest strike yet against the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman — Mexico's top drug lord — since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against drug traffickers in late 2006.

MEXICO CITY – Investigators said Friday there was an explosive device aboard a car that blew up outside police headquarters in the border state of Tamaulipas, the second car-bomb attack against law enforcement in less than a month.

Authorities are still working to determine what explosives were used, who planted the bomb and how it was detonated, according to a state police spokesman who was not authorized to be quoted by name.

MEXICO CITY – Federal police on Monday captured a long-sought, alleged Texas-born gang kingpin who faces drug trafficking charges in the U.S. and has been blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

The announcement came just hours after the government said nearly 10 percent of the federal police force has been fired this year as part of a campaign to root out corruption.

The arrest of Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias "the Barbie," was the culmination of yearlong intelligence operations, said Alejandro Poire, the government's security spokesman.