Title: Drug War
Description: Mexico's Drug Cartel
Description: Mexico's Drug Cartel
MSantor - January 15, 2009 03:26 AM (GMT)
I'm not sure how credible the El Paso Times is but I'll leave it here for any poster to read if they are interested. Such a situation will definitely worsen the States' already troublesome illegal immigration problem.
| QUOTE |
http://www.elpasotimes.com/newupdated/ci_11444354 EL PASO - Mexico is one of two countries that "bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse," according to a report by the U.S. Joint Forces Command on worldwide security threats. The command's "Joint Operating Environment (JOE 2008)" report, which contains projections of global threats and potential next wars, puts Pakistan on the same level as Mexico. "In terms of worse-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. "The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone." The U.S. Joint Forces Command, based in Norfolk, Va., is one of the Defense Departments combat commands that includes members of the different military service branches, active and reserves, as well as civilian and contract employees. One of its key roles is to help transform the U.S. military's capabilities. In the foreword, Marine Gen. J.N. Mattis, the USJFC commander, said "Predictions about the future are always risky ... Regardless, if we do not try to forecast the future, there is no doubt that we will be caught off guard as we strive to protect this experiment in democracy that we call America." The report is one in a series focusing on Mexico's internal security problems, mostly stemming from drug violence and drug corruption. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security and former U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey issued similar alerts about Mexico. Despite such reports, El Pasoan Veronica Callaghan, a border business leader, said she keeps running into people in the region who "are in denial about what is happening in Mexico." Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon instructed his embassy and consular officials to promote a positive image of Mexico. The U.S. military report, which also analyzed economic situations in other countries, also noted that China has increased its influence in places where oil fields are present. |
saver111 - February 11, 2009 06:17 AM (GMT)
Cancún police chief questioned in general's killing
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- The police chief in Cancún has been relieved of his duties and placed under house arrest while he is investigated in the killing of a retired Mexican general who had been the area's anti-drug chief for less than 24 hours, Mexican media are reporting.
A Mexican soldier guards the entrance at a Cancún police station where the military is investigating a murder.
Francisco Velasco Delgado was detained by military officials early Monday and flown to Mexico City, where he was placed under 45 days of house arrest, according to the media reports.
With Delgado's removal, the military has taken over the Cancún police force, several newspapers reported.
Cancún Mayor Gregorio Sanchez Martinez said the move was made "to facilitate all types of investigations into the triple murder that happened last week," the Diario de Yucatan newspaper said.
Salvador Rocha Vargas, the secretary for public security for the state of Quintana Roo, will lead the police force. He said he will take all the pertinent measures "to clean up the Cancún police," the Excelsior newspaper reported Tuesday.
Retired Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quinonez's bullet-riddled body was found a week ago on a road outside Cancún. Authorities said he had been tortured before being shot 11 times.
His aide and a driver also were tortured and killed.
Quintana Roo state prosecutor Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo said last week there was no doubt Tello and the others were victims of organized crime.
"The general was the most mistreated," Rodriguez y Carrillo said at a news conference. "He had burns on his skin and bones in his hands and wrists were broken."
An autopsy revealed he also had broken knees.
Tello had been appointed less than 24 hours earlier as a special drug-fighting consultant for Gregorio Sanchez Martinez, the mayor of the Benito Juarez municipality, which includes the city of Cancún. Tello, who retired from the army in January at the mandatory age of 63, had moved to the resort area three weeks ago.
Mexico is undergoing an unprecedented wave of violence that some have likened to a civil war. The government is battling drug cartels as the traffickers fight each other for control of the lucrative illicit market.
Tello was the second high-ranking army officer to be killed in the area in the past few years. Lt. Col. Wilfrido Flores Saucedo and his aide were gunned down on a Cancún street in 2006. That crime remains unsolved.
The latest killings come as Mexico grapples with the highest violent-death rate in its history. Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora reported in December there had been around 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 tallied in 2007.
There already have been more than 400 drug-related killings this year, according to some news accounts.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas...sted/index.html
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) -- The police chief in Cancún has been relieved of his duties and placed under house arrest while he is investigated in the killing of a retired Mexican general who had been the area's anti-drug chief for less than 24 hours, Mexican media are reporting.
A Mexican soldier guards the entrance at a Cancún police station where the military is investigating a murder.
Francisco Velasco Delgado was detained by military officials early Monday and flown to Mexico City, where he was placed under 45 days of house arrest, according to the media reports.
With Delgado's removal, the military has taken over the Cancún police force, several newspapers reported.
Cancún Mayor Gregorio Sanchez Martinez said the move was made "to facilitate all types of investigations into the triple murder that happened last week," the Diario de Yucatan newspaper said.
Salvador Rocha Vargas, the secretary for public security for the state of Quintana Roo, will lead the police force. He said he will take all the pertinent measures "to clean up the Cancún police," the Excelsior newspaper reported Tuesday.
Retired Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quinonez's bullet-riddled body was found a week ago on a road outside Cancún. Authorities said he had been tortured before being shot 11 times.
His aide and a driver also were tortured and killed.
Quintana Roo state prosecutor Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo said last week there was no doubt Tello and the others were victims of organized crime.
"The general was the most mistreated," Rodriguez y Carrillo said at a news conference. "He had burns on his skin and bones in his hands and wrists were broken."
An autopsy revealed he also had broken knees.
Tello had been appointed less than 24 hours earlier as a special drug-fighting consultant for Gregorio Sanchez Martinez, the mayor of the Benito Juarez municipality, which includes the city of Cancún. Tello, who retired from the army in January at the mandatory age of 63, had moved to the resort area three weeks ago.
Mexico is undergoing an unprecedented wave of violence that some have likened to a civil war. The government is battling drug cartels as the traffickers fight each other for control of the lucrative illicit market.
Tello was the second high-ranking army officer to be killed in the area in the past few years. Lt. Col. Wilfrido Flores Saucedo and his aide were gunned down on a Cancún street in 2006. That crime remains unsolved.
The latest killings come as Mexico grapples with the highest violent-death rate in its history. Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora reported in December there had been around 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 tallied in 2007.
There already have been more than 400 drug-related killings this year, according to some news accounts.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas...sted/index.html
saver111 - February 11, 2009 09:37 AM (GMT)
Mexican violence leaves 1 soldier, 20 others dead
2 hrs 3 mins ago
The slain body of a plain clothes police commander lies next to an ambulance in the border city of Ciudad Juarez Reuters – The slain body of a plain clothes police commander lies next to an ambulance in the border city of Ciudad
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the U.S.-Mexican border region Tuesday, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.
The violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state.
Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said.
Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.
Mexico has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said Monday that more than 6,000 people have died in drug-related violence.
Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was able to recruit new officers.
The town's mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state capital for his own safety.
Also Tuesday, Tijuana city police said emergency officials responding to a report of a car on fire found a sport utility vehicle engulfed in flames and two charred bodies inside.
And in Tepotzotlan, a small town outside Mexico City, two heads in coolers were found inside a car, according to an official with the Mexico state prosecutor's office, who was not authorized to give her name. The heads were accompanied by a message threatening the municipal police chief. Decapitations have become commonplace in Mexico's drug violence.
In other violence late Monday, armed men forced their way into a Mexican prison in Torreon, then killed three prisoners by beating them and setting them on fire in a bathroom. The assailants also freed nine inmates before escaping, state prosecutors said in a statement Tuesday.
Fighting between rival gangs left another two inmates dead Tuesday at an overcrowded prison in central Mexico, said Carlos Gil Abarca, a spokesman for the prevention and rehabilitation office of the Mexico state government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_...iQiYyY1BEpvaA8F
2 hrs 3 mins ago
The slain body of a plain clothes police commander lies next to an ambulance in the border city of Ciudad Juarez Reuters – The slain body of a plain clothes police commander lies next to an ambulance in the border city of Ciudad
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the U.S.-Mexican border region Tuesday, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.
The violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state.
Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said.
Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.
Mexico has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said Monday that more than 6,000 people have died in drug-related violence.
Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was able to recruit new officers.
The town's mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state capital for his own safety.
Also Tuesday, Tijuana city police said emergency officials responding to a report of a car on fire found a sport utility vehicle engulfed in flames and two charred bodies inside.
And in Tepotzotlan, a small town outside Mexico City, two heads in coolers were found inside a car, according to an official with the Mexico state prosecutor's office, who was not authorized to give her name. The heads were accompanied by a message threatening the municipal police chief. Decapitations have become commonplace in Mexico's drug violence.
In other violence late Monday, armed men forced their way into a Mexican prison in Torreon, then killed three prisoners by beating them and setting them on fire in a bathroom. The assailants also freed nine inmates before escaping, state prosecutors said in a statement Tuesday.
Fighting between rival gangs left another two inmates dead Tuesday at an overcrowded prison in central Mexico, said Carlos Gil Abarca, a spokesman for the prevention and rehabilitation office of the Mexico state government.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_...iQiYyY1BEpvaA8F
saver111 - February 21, 2009 11:01 AM (GMT)
Mexican drug suspect Santiago Meza, known as "El pozolero" (The Stew Maker), is presented to the media in Mexico City January 25, 2009. Meza confessed to dissolving the bodies of 300 rivals with corrosive chemicals near the U.S. border, in a shocking claim even by the standards of Mexico's brutal drug war.
REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez (MEXICO)
Mexican drug suspect Santiago Meza, known as "El pozolero" (The Stew Maker), is presented to the media in Mexico City January 25, 2009. REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez (MEXICO)
Santiago Meza Lopez, 45, center, aka 'el pozolero del Teo', who allegedly worked for Teo, a drug lord from the Tijuana area, is escorted by Mexican soldiers and Federal police agents as they leave the place where he allegedly buried his victims, in the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Jan. 23, 2009. Meza Lopez, the number 20th on the FBI most wanted list, allegedly helped a drug cartel dispose of hundreds of victims by dissolving them in acid. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)
Santiago Meza Lopez, 45, right, aka 'el pozolero del Teo', who allegedly worked for Teo, a drug lord from the Tijuana area, reacts during his presentation to the media, in Tijuana, Mexico, Friday, Jan. 23, 2009. Meza Lopez, the number 20th on the FBI most wanted list, allegedly helped a drug cartel dispose of hundreds of victims by dissolving them in acid. (AP Photo/Guillermo Arias)
markniraq - February 22, 2009 02:23 PM (GMT)
Evidence that only the lowly stooges get caught. The bosses never ever do.. Money Talks.... BS walks. I still think the Europeans are the most ruthless.....Bosnia and Croatia........
MSantor - March 12, 2009 04:48 AM (GMT)
I wonder just how effective any outside help will be at this point in the continuing, worsening drug war there?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7934889.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7934889.stm
| QUOTE |
| France offers Mexico police aid French President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to help Mexico in its battle against organised crime during an official visit to the country. Mr Sarkozy offered his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon help with police training and technology for gathering intelligence. The two leaders also unveiled plans to build a $550m (£397m) Franco-European helicopter factory in Mexico. Mexico is currently engaged in a battle with feuding drugs cartels. The gangs are fighting a vicious turf war in the north of the country over lucrative smuggling routes into the US. Mexico deployed thousands of troops this week to Ciudad Juarez, near the US border, to try to wrest control of the city from the gangs. Mr Sarkozy praised Mr Calderon's battle against the cartels. Equipment offered "I have told President Calderon that we are at his disposal," he said. "We are ready to receive Mexican equipment in French police laboratories. We are willing to send equipment to Mexico. "We would like to help Mexico resolve this problem which causes so much distress such as insecurity." The French president was accompanied by his wife Carla Bruni as well as French business leaders on his one-day visit. Among business deals unveiled during the visit was an investment by helicopter maker Eurocopter to build a $550m (£397m) assembly plant in Mexico. Mr Calderon said that the investment would not only be a boost for Mexico's aeronautics industry "but it will also improve equipment conditions for our armed forces". Mr Sarzoky said he aimed "to bring France and Mexico's economic, cultural, political and diplomatic relations to a level never reached before." The two leaders also discussed the case of French citizen Florence Cassez who is serving a 60-year prison sentence in Mexico for her role in a kidnapping gang. Mr Sarkozy said a team of legal experts from both countries would examine whether she could be repatriated to France. The French president also addressed the Mexican Senate during his visit. Analysts say the trip comes as Mexico is seeking to diversify its export destinations, with 80% of its exports currently going to the US. |
saver111 - March 26, 2009 06:11 AM (GMT)
A soldier escorts alleged Mexican drug cartel lieutenant Hector Huerta Rios after a press conference to show him to the media in Mexico City, Wednesday, March 25, 2009. Huerta Rios, who allegedly ran operations for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, was detained Tuesday in Monterrey, northern Mexico.
(AP Photo/Claudio Cruz)
Soldiers guard alleged drug cartel lieutenant Hector Huerta Rios, center, along with several of his alleged bodyguards during their presentation to the media in Mexico City, Wednesday, March 25, 2009. Huerta Rios, who allegedly ran operations for the Beltran Leyva drug cartel, was detained Tuesday in Monterrey, northern Mexico.
(AP Photo/Claudio Cruz)
Soldiers escort drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios (L) before boarding a plane bound for Mexico City at the air force base in Salinas Victoria, on the outskirts of Monterrey, northern Mexico March 24, 2009. Soldiers on Tuesday captured Huerta Rios of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is accused of the killing of a police chief in this industrial city. Huerta Rios was seized along with five persons, weapons and money at his car dealership. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo (MEXICO POLITICS CONFLICT SOCIETY MILITARY)
Soldiers escort drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios at the air force base in Salinas Victoria, on the outskirts of Monterrey, northern Mexico March 24, 2009. Soldiers on Tuesday captured Huerta Rios of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is accused of the killing of a police chief in this industrial city. Huerta Rios was seized along with five persons, weapons and money at his car dealership. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo
(MEXICO POLITICS MILITARY CONFLICT SOCIETY IMAGE OF THE DAY TOP PICTURE)
Soldiers take part in a military operation to capture drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios in the suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia in Monterrey, northern Mexico March 24, 2009. Soldiers on Tuesday captured Huerta Rios of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is accused of the killing of a police chief in this industrial city. Huerta Rios was seized along with five persons, weapons and money at his car dealership.
REUTERS/Tomas Bravo (MEXICO POLITICS CONFLICT SOCIETY)
Soldiers take part in an operation to capture drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios in the suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia in Monterrey, northern Mexico March 24, 2009. Soldiers on Tuesday captured Huerta Rios of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is accused of the killing of a police chief in this industrial city. Huerta Rios was seized along with five persons, weapons and money at his car dealership.
REUTERS/Tomas Bravo (MEXICO POLITICS CONFLICT SOCIETY)
A soldier escorts a man detained during a military operation to capture drug kingpin Hector Huerta Rios in the suburb of San Pedro Garza Garcia in Monterrey, northern Mexico March 24, 2009. Soldiers on Tuesday captured Huerta Rios of the Beltran Leyva cartel who is accused of the killing of a police chief in this industrial city. Huerta Rios was seized along with five persons, weapons and money at his car dealership. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo (MEXICO POLITICS CONFLICT SOCIETY)
saver111 - March 26, 2009 06:16 AM (GMT)
Clinton: US shares blame for Mexican drug wars
AP
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 3 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday pledged to stand with Mexico in its violent struggle against drug cartels and admitted that Americans' "insatiable" appetite for illegal narcotics and their inability to control weapons smuggling was partly to blame.
Fearing that Mexican drug violence may spill across the border, Clinton promised to boost cooperation to improve security on both sides.
"The criminals and kingpins spreading violence are trying to corrode the foundations of law, order, friendship and trust between us that support our continent," she told a news conference with Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa. "They will fail."
"We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you," she said after lengthy talks with Espinosa and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration pledged to send more money, technology and manpower to secure the border in the U.S. Southwest and help Mexico battle the cartels.
Clinton said Wednesday the White House would also seek an additional $80 million to help Mexico buy Blackhawk helicopters.
All that is in addition to a three-year, $1.4 billion Bush administration-era program to support Mexico's efforts. Congress already has approved $700 million of that. President Barack Obama has said he wants to revamp the initiative.
Obama said Tuesday he wanted the U.S. to do more to prevent guns and cash from illicit drug sales from flowing into Mexico.
But Clinton's remarks were more forceful in recognizing the U.S. share of the blame. In the past, particularly under the Bush administration, Mexican officials have complained that Washington failed to acknowledge the extent that U.S. drug demand and weapons smuggling fuels the violence.
"I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility," Clinton told reporters aboard her plane on her way to Mexico.
"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
Criminals are outgunning law enforcement officials, she said, referring to guns and military-style equipment such as night-vision goggles and body armor that the cartels are smuggling from the U.S.
"Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity ... to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible," she said. "That's not right."
Officials said her priorities included encouraging Calderon's government to increase its battle against rampant corruption by promoting police and judicial reform.
Clinton will visit a police station in the capital on Thursday before heading to the northern city of Monterrey, where she will speak with university students about U.S.-Mexican relations.
Just hours before she arrived in Mexico, the Mexican army announced it had captured one of the country's most-wanted smugglers, a man accused of controlling the flow of drugs through Monterrey for the powerful Beltran-Leyva cartel.
The U.S. measures outlined Tuesday include increasing the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and antigun-trafficking agents operating along the border, as well as sending more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.
Those measures fall short of calls from some U.S. states that troops be deployed to prevent further spillover of the violence, which has surged since Calderon stepped up his government's battle against the cartels.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090326/ap_on_.../clinton_mexico
AP
By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 3 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday pledged to stand with Mexico in its violent struggle against drug cartels and admitted that Americans' "insatiable" appetite for illegal narcotics and their inability to control weapons smuggling was partly to blame.
Fearing that Mexican drug violence may spill across the border, Clinton promised to boost cooperation to improve security on both sides.
"The criminals and kingpins spreading violence are trying to corrode the foundations of law, order, friendship and trust between us that support our continent," she told a news conference with Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa. "They will fail."
"We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you," she said after lengthy talks with Espinosa and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
On Tuesday, the Obama administration pledged to send more money, technology and manpower to secure the border in the U.S. Southwest and help Mexico battle the cartels.
Clinton said Wednesday the White House would also seek an additional $80 million to help Mexico buy Blackhawk helicopters.
All that is in addition to a three-year, $1.4 billion Bush administration-era program to support Mexico's efforts. Congress already has approved $700 million of that. President Barack Obama has said he wants to revamp the initiative.
Obama said Tuesday he wanted the U.S. to do more to prevent guns and cash from illicit drug sales from flowing into Mexico.
But Clinton's remarks were more forceful in recognizing the U.S. share of the blame. In the past, particularly under the Bush administration, Mexican officials have complained that Washington failed to acknowledge the extent that U.S. drug demand and weapons smuggling fuels the violence.
"I feel very strongly we have a co-responsibility," Clinton told reporters aboard her plane on her way to Mexico.
"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," she said. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."
Criminals are outgunning law enforcement officials, she said, referring to guns and military-style equipment such as night-vision goggles and body armor that the cartels are smuggling from the U.S.
"Clearly, what we have been doing has not worked and it is unfair for our incapacity ... to be creating a situation where people are holding the Mexican government and people responsible," she said. "That's not right."
Officials said her priorities included encouraging Calderon's government to increase its battle against rampant corruption by promoting police and judicial reform.
Clinton will visit a police station in the capital on Thursday before heading to the northern city of Monterrey, where she will speak with university students about U.S.-Mexican relations.
Just hours before she arrived in Mexico, the Mexican army announced it had captured one of the country's most-wanted smugglers, a man accused of controlling the flow of drugs through Monterrey for the powerful Beltran-Leyva cartel.
The U.S. measures outlined Tuesday include increasing the number of immigrations and customs agents, drug agents and antigun-trafficking agents operating along the border, as well as sending more U.S. officials to work inside Mexico.
Those measures fall short of calls from some U.S. states that troops be deployed to prevent further spillover of the violence, which has surged since Calderon stepped up his government's battle against the cartels.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090326/ap_on_.../clinton_mexico
saver111 - April 20, 2009 06:53 AM (GMT)
Mexico says 8 killed in attack on prison convoy
AP
A policeman stands with others near a destroyed police vehicle after a clash with an armed group in Tepic, Mexico, Saturday, April 18, 2009. Eight Mexican law enforcement officers were killed Saturday in a brazen attack on a police convoy transporting an important drug suspect to a prison in western Mexico. (AP Photo/ Enfoque, Abisai Barajas)
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 17 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – In the latest of a series of brazen, drug-related attacks, gunmen ambushed a prisoner transfer convoy in western Mexico, killing eight officers in a failed attempt to free a high-level cartel member, police said Sunday.
At least 20 assailants launched a running gun battle Saturday against the dwindling column of vehicles escorting nine prisoners as it raced between an airport and penitentiary in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, police said.
As their comrades lay dying in a string of bullet-riddled pickups, part of the convoy stopped and turned to fight off the attackers, said Gen. Rodolfo Cruz, head of support operations for the Federal Police.
"The rest of the convoy stopped and opened fire on the attackers, who fled in all directions when they saw their attack being repulsed," Cruz said. The fallen officers "gave the most sacred thing a human has, their lives."
Police called it a well-planned attack intended to free Jeronimo Gamez, cousin of Arturo Beltran Leyva, the reputed leader of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels. Gamez was arrested in Mexico City in January and was being moved to a prison in Nayarit's capital city, Tepic.
[n]Officers managed to deliver Gamez and eight other detainees to the prison despite the attacks which began just outside the airport[/b]. Photos showed battered police pickup trucks with shot-out windows, crumpled fenders or bullet holes and blood stains from the fallen police.
Four federal police officers, two federal investigative agents and two prison employees died in the attack. There was no immediate information on the number of injured or wounded and no reports of deaths or arrests among the attackers.
Prosecutors accuse Gamez of acting as Beltran Leyva's representative in negotiating drug deals with Colombian traffickers.
The attack came three days after a bold assault on an army patrol in the nearby state of Guerrero, where 15 assailants and one soldier died, and just a day after officials reported 12 people dead across the state of Michoacan, including three who were beheaded.
The assaults by emboldened, heavily armed cartels bracketed the first official visit Thursday by U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to step up enforcement of laws banning the transfer of guns across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexico has suffered a continuing wave of drug-related violence, killing more than 10,650 people since 2006, when Calderon sent 45,000 troops to directly confront the traffickers.
As if to illustrate the scale of the drug war being fought in Mexico, federal police staged a massive operation using 400 federal officers, two Blackhawk helicopters and an airplane to raid a baptismal party being held Saturday by alleged members of the Familia Michoacana cartel.
Police detained 44 people, including a man allegedly in charge of recruitment for the Michoacan-based gang.
Federal police commissioner Rodrigo Esparza said that suspect Rafael Cedeno claimed to have trained 9,000 recruits for the cartel in 2008, hinting at the gang's size and power.
True to the gang's quasi-moralistic tone — it has claimed in the past to oppose common crime — Cedeno claimed the training involved instilling "moral and ethical values" in recruits, including family unity and shunning alcohol and drugs.
Many of the people attending the baptism party at a Morelia resort were released, and the other 43 people were being held based on their presumed involvement in the drug gang.
The White House on Wednesday added the Familia Michoacana to the U.S. government's blacklist of drug syndicates, known commonly as the Drug Kingpin Act.
U.S. officials say the gang moves massive amounts of cocaine from Colombian drug dealers. Esparza said Cedeno was also in charge of shipping methamphetamine precursor chemicals through Pacific coast ports and oversaw hit squads in the region to fight off the rival Gulf cartel.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico
Federal police officers escort alleged Mexican drug trafficker Vicente Carrillo Leyva, center, during his presentation to the media in Mexico City, Thursday, April 2, 2009. Carrillo Leyva, one of Mexico's most wanted drug suspects who allegedly was the second-in-command of the powerful Juarez cartel, was caught while exercising in a park in a posh Mexico City neighborhood early Wednesday, the Attorney General's office said Thursday. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
AP
A policeman stands with others near a destroyed police vehicle after a clash with an armed group in Tepic, Mexico, Saturday, April 18, 2009. Eight Mexican law enforcement officers were killed Saturday in a brazen attack on a police convoy transporting an important drug suspect to a prison in western Mexico. (AP Photo/ Enfoque, Abisai Barajas)
By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 17 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – In the latest of a series of brazen, drug-related attacks, gunmen ambushed a prisoner transfer convoy in western Mexico, killing eight officers in a failed attempt to free a high-level cartel member, police said Sunday.
At least 20 assailants launched a running gun battle Saturday against the dwindling column of vehicles escorting nine prisoners as it raced between an airport and penitentiary in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, police said.
As their comrades lay dying in a string of bullet-riddled pickups, part of the convoy stopped and turned to fight off the attackers, said Gen. Rodolfo Cruz, head of support operations for the Federal Police.
"The rest of the convoy stopped and opened fire on the attackers, who fled in all directions when they saw their attack being repulsed," Cruz said. The fallen officers "gave the most sacred thing a human has, their lives."
Police called it a well-planned attack intended to free Jeronimo Gamez, cousin of Arturo Beltran Leyva, the reputed leader of one of Mexico's most powerful cartels. Gamez was arrested in Mexico City in January and was being moved to a prison in Nayarit's capital city, Tepic.
[n]Officers managed to deliver Gamez and eight other detainees to the prison despite the attacks which began just outside the airport[/b]. Photos showed battered police pickup trucks with shot-out windows, crumpled fenders or bullet holes and blood stains from the fallen police.
Four federal police officers, two federal investigative agents and two prison employees died in the attack. There was no immediate information on the number of injured or wounded and no reports of deaths or arrests among the attackers.
Prosecutors accuse Gamez of acting as Beltran Leyva's representative in negotiating drug deals with Colombian traffickers.
The attack came three days after a bold assault on an army patrol in the nearby state of Guerrero, where 15 assailants and one soldier died, and just a day after officials reported 12 people dead across the state of Michoacan, including three who were beheaded.
The assaults by emboldened, heavily armed cartels bracketed the first official visit Thursday by U.S. President Barack Obama, who vowed to step up enforcement of laws banning the transfer of guns across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mexico has suffered a continuing wave of drug-related violence, killing more than 10,650 people since 2006, when Calderon sent 45,000 troops to directly confront the traffickers.
As if to illustrate the scale of the drug war being fought in Mexico, federal police staged a massive operation using 400 federal officers, two Blackhawk helicopters and an airplane to raid a baptismal party being held Saturday by alleged members of the Familia Michoacana cartel.
Police detained 44 people, including a man allegedly in charge of recruitment for the Michoacan-based gang.
Federal police commissioner Rodrigo Esparza said that suspect Rafael Cedeno claimed to have trained 9,000 recruits for the cartel in 2008, hinting at the gang's size and power.
True to the gang's quasi-moralistic tone — it has claimed in the past to oppose common crime — Cedeno claimed the training involved instilling "moral and ethical values" in recruits, including family unity and shunning alcohol and drugs.
Many of the people attending the baptism party at a Morelia resort were released, and the other 43 people were being held based on their presumed involvement in the drug gang.
The White House on Wednesday added the Familia Michoacana to the U.S. government's blacklist of drug syndicates, known commonly as the Drug Kingpin Act.
U.S. officials say the gang moves massive amounts of cocaine from Colombian drug dealers. Esparza said Cedeno was also in charge of shipping methamphetamine precursor chemicals through Pacific coast ports and oversaw hit squads in the region to fight off the rival Gulf cartel.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico
Federal police officers escort alleged Mexican drug trafficker Vicente Carrillo Leyva, center, during his presentation to the media in Mexico City, Thursday, April 2, 2009. Carrillo Leyva, one of Mexico's most wanted drug suspects who allegedly was the second-in-command of the powerful Juarez cartel, was caught while exercising in a park in a posh Mexico City neighborhood early Wednesday, the Attorney General's office said Thursday. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
saver111 - April 20, 2009 08:16 AM (GMT)
Mexican arms race: bigger guns for drug cartels
AP
Police remove weapons that were seized from suspected drug traffickers after presenting the weapons and the suspects to the press at the federal police headquarters in Mexico City, Sunday, April 19, 2009. During a police operation Saturday against the Michoacan-based drug cartel known as La Familia, or, 'The Family,' 44 people were detained during a baptism in Morelia, Mexico, according to federal police. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer Alexandra Olson, Associated Press Writer – 37 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – An escalating arms race among Mexico's drug cartels casts doubt on whether Mexico or the U.S. can stop the flow of weaponry, despite renewed vows last week from presidents of both countries.
Stockpiles captured by Mexican soldiers show that warring traffickers are now obtaining military-grade weaponry such as grenades, launchers, machine guns, mortars and anti-tank rockets.
Some drug gangs have even sought explosive material that some experts worry could be used in car bombs and improvised explosive devices of the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers found 14 sticks of TNT among an arsenal of hundreds of rifles and grenades seized in November from a house in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
But so far, attempts at using bombs have been unsuccessful as drug gangs haven't yet developed the skills to build effective ones, said Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst with Stratfor, a private U.S.-based group. Authorities suspect the Sinaloa cartel tried to kill a Mexico City police officer last year with a homemade bomb that killed only the attacker.
"Once you have a bomb maker that has mastered that skill, unless that bomb maker is caught, he can keep constructing those devices and send them out to be deployed," he said.
One of the most worrisome weapons yet was seized this week just south of Nogales, Ariz.: a powerful gun mounted on the back of an SUV and protected by a thick metal shield. Police said it belonged to one of the Beltran Leyva drug gangs.
Mexican and U.S. authorities disagree on just what type of gun it was. Federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz maintains it was .50-caliber anti-air craft machine gun. ATF, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said it was an unmodified .50-caliber semiautomatic rifle made by TNW, a U.S. firearms manufacturer.
ATF investigators traced the gun — along with seven others seized at a house in Sonora state on Monday — to suppliers in the United States, said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF in Arizona and New Mexico.
While crudely built, the truck-mounted rifle would give traffickers a powerful advantage against lightly armed police, Newell said: A gunman could protect a whole convoy with sweeping fire while protected by the metal shield.
"Imagine being a two- or three-man police team at a rural checkpoint and these guys roll up with this thing," Newell said. "You'd be slightly intimidated, wouldn't you?"
President Barack Obama says he will crack down on the smuggling of weapons easily purchased lawfully in the United States and then taken to Mexico, which has strict gun-control laws.
But Mexico's drug gangs are clearly digging in for this war, which has already claimed more than 10,670 lives since Calderon deployed 45,000 troops to confront the cartels at the beginning of his presidency in December 2006.
Even as the governments try to choke off the U.S. weapons supply, the gangs are clearly trying to expand their arsenals beyond the assault rifles and semi-automatics they can get in the United States.
These and other, much heavier weapons are readily available on the global black market, particularly from stockpiles left over from Central America's civil wars.
Civilians are increasingly being targeted. In October, assailants hurled a grenade at the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey. In January, a TV network's offices in the same city were attacked.
The grenades used in both attacks were similar to one thrown into a nightclub in Pharr, Texas, in January, according to the ATF. That one didn't explode.
The agency suspects they came from a Monterrey warehouse where the Gulf cartel had been stockpiling weapons, including South Korean-made K75 fragmentation grenades.
The cartels are still far from obtaining enough arms and training to overpower Mexico's military, which is much better weapons coordination, Meiners said.
On Wednesday, only hours before Obama's visit, 15 gunmen were killed but only one soldier died when a convoy of armed men fought with troops patrolling a drug trafficking hotbed in remote, mountainous Guerrero state.
But local police are outgunned and have left the battle to the military — showing how hard it will be to achieve what Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Obama agreed will be success — a drug war which local police can handle without military help.
"We only have 20 police, and we cannot risk entering in operations against the narcos," said Santiago Bustos, the second-in-command of the police in San Nicolas del Oro, where Wednesday's shootout happened.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_...WV4aWNhbmFybXNy
AP
Police remove weapons that were seized from suspected drug traffickers after presenting the weapons and the suspects to the press at the federal police headquarters in Mexico City, Sunday, April 19, 2009. During a police operation Saturday against the Michoacan-based drug cartel known as La Familia, or, 'The Family,' 44 people were detained during a baptism in Morelia, Mexico, according to federal police. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
By ALEXANDRA OLSON, Associated Press Writer Alexandra Olson, Associated Press Writer – 37 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – An escalating arms race among Mexico's drug cartels casts doubt on whether Mexico or the U.S. can stop the flow of weaponry, despite renewed vows last week from presidents of both countries.
Stockpiles captured by Mexican soldiers show that warring traffickers are now obtaining military-grade weaponry such as grenades, launchers, machine guns, mortars and anti-tank rockets.
Some drug gangs have even sought explosive material that some experts worry could be used in car bombs and improvised explosive devices of the kind used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers found 14 sticks of TNT among an arsenal of hundreds of rifles and grenades seized in November from a house in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
But so far, attempts at using bombs have been unsuccessful as drug gangs haven't yet developed the skills to build effective ones, said Stephen Meiners, a Latin America analyst with Stratfor, a private U.S.-based group. Authorities suspect the Sinaloa cartel tried to kill a Mexico City police officer last year with a homemade bomb that killed only the attacker.
"Once you have a bomb maker that has mastered that skill, unless that bomb maker is caught, he can keep constructing those devices and send them out to be deployed," he said.
One of the most worrisome weapons yet was seized this week just south of Nogales, Ariz.: a powerful gun mounted on the back of an SUV and protected by a thick metal shield. Police said it belonged to one of the Beltran Leyva drug gangs.
Mexican and U.S. authorities disagree on just what type of gun it was. Federal police coordinator Gen. Rodolfo Cruz maintains it was .50-caliber anti-air craft machine gun. ATF, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said it was an unmodified .50-caliber semiautomatic rifle made by TNW, a U.S. firearms manufacturer.
ATF investigators traced the gun — along with seven others seized at a house in Sonora state on Monday — to suppliers in the United States, said Bill Newell, special agent in charge of the ATF in Arizona and New Mexico.
While crudely built, the truck-mounted rifle would give traffickers a powerful advantage against lightly armed police, Newell said: A gunman could protect a whole convoy with sweeping fire while protected by the metal shield.
"Imagine being a two- or three-man police team at a rural checkpoint and these guys roll up with this thing," Newell said. "You'd be slightly intimidated, wouldn't you?"
President Barack Obama says he will crack down on the smuggling of weapons easily purchased lawfully in the United States and then taken to Mexico, which has strict gun-control laws.
But Mexico's drug gangs are clearly digging in for this war, which has already claimed more than 10,670 lives since Calderon deployed 45,000 troops to confront the cartels at the beginning of his presidency in December 2006.
Even as the governments try to choke off the U.S. weapons supply, the gangs are clearly trying to expand their arsenals beyond the assault rifles and semi-automatics they can get in the United States.
These and other, much heavier weapons are readily available on the global black market, particularly from stockpiles left over from Central America's civil wars.
Civilians are increasingly being targeted. In October, assailants hurled a grenade at the U.S. consulate in the northern city of Monterrey. In January, a TV network's offices in the same city were attacked.
The grenades used in both attacks were similar to one thrown into a nightclub in Pharr, Texas, in January, according to the ATF. That one didn't explode.
The agency suspects they came from a Monterrey warehouse where the Gulf cartel had been stockpiling weapons, including South Korean-made K75 fragmentation grenades.
The cartels are still far from obtaining enough arms and training to overpower Mexico's military, which is much better weapons coordination, Meiners said.
On Wednesday, only hours before Obama's visit, 15 gunmen were killed but only one soldier died when a convoy of armed men fought with troops patrolling a drug trafficking hotbed in remote, mountainous Guerrero state.
But local police are outgunned and have left the battle to the military — showing how hard it will be to achieve what Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Obama agreed will be success — a drug war which local police can handle without military help.
"We only have 20 police, and we cannot risk entering in operations against the narcos," said Santiago Bustos, the second-in-command of the police in San Nicolas del Oro, where Wednesday's shootout happened.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090420/ap_on_...WV4aWNhbmFybXNy
saver111 - April 29, 2009 09:40 AM (GMT)
Attacks kill 7 Mexican police in Tijuana
AP
By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer Elliot Spagat, Associated Press Writer – Tue Apr 28, 7:26 pm ET
TIJUANA, Mexico – Seven police officers were assassinated in about an hour's time in what authorities said Tuesday was a coordinated effort that followed months of relative calm in a border city stricken by drug-fueled violence. Three officers were injured.
Municipal police detained several people after Monday night's attacks, said Jose Manuel Yepiz, spokesman for the Baja California state attorney general's office. He did not have additional details.
After four officers were killed by gunfire outside a convenience store, police scanners hummed with "narcocorridos," or drug ballads. One voice threatened over the airwaves that 30 officers would be killed.
One officer was shot dead in each of three attacks that followed, including one at a police station, Yepiz said.
The killings come as Mayor Jorge Ramos intensifies an effort to rid the police department of corrupt officers.
The city has fired 248 police officers accused of corruption since Ramos took office in December 2006 and about 130 others are suspended pending review for possible dismissal, said Julian Leyzaola, the city's public safety secretary. The city has 2,160 officers.
Leyzaola said in an interview last week that about 15 Tijuana police officers had been killed on the job during Ramos' administration.
Nine police officers were killed last year in neighboring Playas de Rosarito, a city of 130,000 people, including about 14,000 U.S. citizens, Mayor Hugo Torres said. Seven or eight were involved in drug trafficking, he said.
Monday's killings were one of the most brazen since a period of bloodshed that claimed more than 400 lives in the last three months of 2008. According to U.S. and Mexican authorities, Tijuana is a battleground for two drug traffickers — Fernando Sanchez Arellano, heir to the notorious but enfeebled Arellano Felix cartel, and Teodoro Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who broke away in April 2008 in a shootout that killed 14 people.
Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, said Tijuana officers have been killed before but never so many in a single attack. He said the slayings may signal a new wave of violence in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California.
"The violence follows a pattern," he said. "It falls, then it rises, then it falls. Today we are witnessing the beginning of the curve rising again."
Nationwide, Mexico's drug violence has claimed more than 10,700 lives since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched an anti-drug campaign. About 45,000 soldiers have been deployed to drug-plagued areas.
__
Associated Press Writer Mariana Martinez contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090428/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico
AP
By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer Elliot Spagat, Associated Press Writer – Tue Apr 28, 7:26 pm ET
TIJUANA, Mexico – Seven police officers were assassinated in about an hour's time in what authorities said Tuesday was a coordinated effort that followed months of relative calm in a border city stricken by drug-fueled violence. Three officers were injured.
Municipal police detained several people after Monday night's attacks, said Jose Manuel Yepiz, spokesman for the Baja California state attorney general's office. He did not have additional details.
After four officers were killed by gunfire outside a convenience store, police scanners hummed with "narcocorridos," or drug ballads. One voice threatened over the airwaves that 30 officers would be killed.
One officer was shot dead in each of three attacks that followed, including one at a police station, Yepiz said.
The killings come as Mayor Jorge Ramos intensifies an effort to rid the police department of corrupt officers.
The city has fired 248 police officers accused of corruption since Ramos took office in December 2006 and about 130 others are suspended pending review for possible dismissal, said Julian Leyzaola, the city's public safety secretary. The city has 2,160 officers.
Leyzaola said in an interview last week that about 15 Tijuana police officers had been killed on the job during Ramos' administration.
Nine police officers were killed last year in neighboring Playas de Rosarito, a city of 130,000 people, including about 14,000 U.S. citizens, Mayor Hugo Torres said. Seven or eight were involved in drug trafficking, he said.
Monday's killings were one of the most brazen since a period of bloodshed that claimed more than 400 lives in the last three months of 2008. According to U.S. and Mexican authorities, Tijuana is a battleground for two drug traffickers — Fernando Sanchez Arellano, heir to the notorious but enfeebled Arellano Felix cartel, and Teodoro Garcia Simental, a renegade lieutenant who broke away in April 2008 in a shootout that killed 14 people.
Victor Clark Alfaro, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights, said Tijuana officers have been killed before but never so many in a single attack. He said the slayings may signal a new wave of violence in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California.
"The violence follows a pattern," he said. "It falls, then it rises, then it falls. Today we are witnessing the beginning of the curve rising again."
Nationwide, Mexico's drug violence has claimed more than 10,700 lives since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched an anti-drug campaign. About 45,000 soldiers have been deployed to drug-plagued areas.
__
Associated Press Writer Mariana Martinez contributed to this report.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090428/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico
saver111 - June 8, 2009 02:44 AM (GMT)
Shootout kills 16 gunmen, 2 soldiers in Acapulco
AP
By NATALIA PARRA, Associated Press Writer Natalia Parra, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 25 mins ago
ACAPULCO, Mexico – It was a shootout straight from Hollywood in the former playground of its biggest stars: Outlaws holed up in a hillside mansion fought heavily armed Mexican soldiers with a rain of gunfire and grenades that had tourists cowering in hotels nearby.
Roughly 3,000 shots and 50 explosions marked the four-hour battle late Saturday that left 16 gunmen and two soldiers dead. Nine other people were wounded, including three bystanders.
More than a dozen Mexican tourists were evacuated from a neighboring hotel strip frozen in the 1950s, when Elizabeth Taylor held one of her many weddings in Acapulco and John Wayne and "Tarzan" star Johnny Weissmuller threw lavish parties at Los Flamingos Hotel less than 100 yards (meters) from where gunfire broke out.
Cindy Pelaquin and Michelle Johnson, both of Boston, were watching the famous Acapulco cliff divers less than a mile away. They saw the military roadblocks but heard nothing.
"We were just lucky I suppose," said Johnson, a Boston nurse.
One neighbor said it sounded like fireworks. But a Mexican tourist, whose group had just arrived from the Mexico City area, immediately recognized the sound of gunshots and dove under a hotel bed.
The battle erupted after soldiers received a tip that a group of armed men were gathered at a gated house in a seedy section of Acapulco where working-class homes bleed into 1950s mansions. One hotel across from the street from the shootout offers three-hour stays for 30 pesos, about $2.25.
Several gunmen tried to flee but crashed their car into a military Hummer that was blocking the gate. At one point, more armed men with grenades arrived to reinforce the men in the house, but they died in the shooting, said an army colonel, who led the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Inside, soldiers found four men bound and shirtless who claimed they were Guerrero state police officers being held hostage. The soldiers confiscated 47 guns, grenades and ammunition, as well as several cars, including a Mercedes Benz.
Five people inside the house were detained, including the four alleged officers, the Defense Department said in a statement.
Soldiers did not know the hostages were inside when the shootout began, and the colonel said their claims to be police would be investigated.
"We found them like this, handcuffed, and they say they were kidnapped. So if they were kidnapped, as they say, then we rescued them," said the colonel, who gave reporters a tour of the house in a ski mask to protect his identity.
Military officials said they are still investigating who the gunmen are. But given the weapons stash, large home and late-model cars, it looked like the normal trappings for drug cartels. No drugs were found.
Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, has long suffered from drug violence from cartels fighting for turf.
The Beltran Leyva cartel, in particular, has a strong presence in Acapulco. Last month, soldiers arrested a suspected cartel lieutenant as he stepped off a private plane in the northern city of Monterrey on his way back from Acapulco, where he said he'd met with cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva at a baptism party.
The premier resort town for America's rich and famous in the '50s and '60s, Acapulco suffered a decline as traffic and urban sprawl took over the palm-swept ambiance. It was reborn in the 1980s as a popular resort for Mexicans, and the working class now flock to the old hotel zone, where they can buy a two-night stay and transportation for as little as $50.
U.S. tourists also have returned during the past several years following construction of the new "Diamond Zone" strip of five-star hotels — on the other side of town from Saturday's violence. Acapulco now ranks with Cancun as one of Mexico's most-visited resort cities.
While tourism is usually low this time of year, the start of the hurricane season in the Pacific, numbers are worse than usual after a swine-flu outbreak in late April that pushed hotel occupancy in Mexico to half its normal rate and prompted the cancellation of many flights and cruise ship visits.
Hotel Los Flamingos, a pink building perched on a cliff where waiters climb trees to pull down coconuts for drinks, had few guests and only two rooms with foreign visitors, according to hotel workers who insisted they had not heard the shooting the night before.
Tourism is Mexico's third-largest source of legal foreign income, after oil and remittances.
"At the resorts they basically tell you not to venture out," Johnson said.
"It's pretty shocking. It's really sad. This a huge problem," added Pelaquin, an insurance analyst whose friends already thought her trip to Mexico was risky because of swine flu. "Mexicans grow the drugs and send them to the U.S. where Americans buy them so we can't blame it just on this country."
President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers across Mexico to battle drug violence. More than 10,800 people have died since the offensive began in December 2006.
Although foreign tourists very rarely get caught in the violence, shootouts and kidnappings have become more frequent in resort areas such as Acapulco and Cancun. In 2007, a couple from Canada was wounded when someone fired into a hotel lobby in Acapulco.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico
AP
By NATALIA PARRA, Associated Press Writer Natalia Parra, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 25 mins ago
ACAPULCO, Mexico – It was a shootout straight from Hollywood in the former playground of its biggest stars: Outlaws holed up in a hillside mansion fought heavily armed Mexican soldiers with a rain of gunfire and grenades that had tourists cowering in hotels nearby.
Roughly 3,000 shots and 50 explosions marked the four-hour battle late Saturday that left 16 gunmen and two soldiers dead. Nine other people were wounded, including three bystanders.
More than a dozen Mexican tourists were evacuated from a neighboring hotel strip frozen in the 1950s, when Elizabeth Taylor held one of her many weddings in Acapulco and John Wayne and "Tarzan" star Johnny Weissmuller threw lavish parties at Los Flamingos Hotel less than 100 yards (meters) from where gunfire broke out.
Cindy Pelaquin and Michelle Johnson, both of Boston, were watching the famous Acapulco cliff divers less than a mile away. They saw the military roadblocks but heard nothing.
"We were just lucky I suppose," said Johnson, a Boston nurse.
One neighbor said it sounded like fireworks. But a Mexican tourist, whose group had just arrived from the Mexico City area, immediately recognized the sound of gunshots and dove under a hotel bed.
The battle erupted after soldiers received a tip that a group of armed men were gathered at a gated house in a seedy section of Acapulco where working-class homes bleed into 1950s mansions. One hotel across from the street from the shootout offers three-hour stays for 30 pesos, about $2.25.
Several gunmen tried to flee but crashed their car into a military Hummer that was blocking the gate. At one point, more armed men with grenades arrived to reinforce the men in the house, but they died in the shooting, said an army colonel, who led the operation and spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
Inside, soldiers found four men bound and shirtless who claimed they were Guerrero state police officers being held hostage. The soldiers confiscated 47 guns, grenades and ammunition, as well as several cars, including a Mercedes Benz.
Five people inside the house were detained, including the four alleged officers, the Defense Department said in a statement.
Soldiers did not know the hostages were inside when the shootout began, and the colonel said their claims to be police would be investigated.
"We found them like this, handcuffed, and they say they were kidnapped. So if they were kidnapped, as they say, then we rescued them," said the colonel, who gave reporters a tour of the house in a ski mask to protect his identity.
Military officials said they are still investigating who the gunmen are. But given the weapons stash, large home and late-model cars, it looked like the normal trappings for drug cartels. No drugs were found.
Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located, has long suffered from drug violence from cartels fighting for turf.
The Beltran Leyva cartel, in particular, has a strong presence in Acapulco. Last month, soldiers arrested a suspected cartel lieutenant as he stepped off a private plane in the northern city of Monterrey on his way back from Acapulco, where he said he'd met with cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva at a baptism party.
The premier resort town for America's rich and famous in the '50s and '60s, Acapulco suffered a decline as traffic and urban sprawl took over the palm-swept ambiance. It was reborn in the 1980s as a popular resort for Mexicans, and the working class now flock to the old hotel zone, where they can buy a two-night stay and transportation for as little as $50.
U.S. tourists also have returned during the past several years following construction of the new "Diamond Zone" strip of five-star hotels — on the other side of town from Saturday's violence. Acapulco now ranks with Cancun as one of Mexico's most-visited resort cities.
While tourism is usually low this time of year, the start of the hurricane season in the Pacific, numbers are worse than usual after a swine-flu outbreak in late April that pushed hotel occupancy in Mexico to half its normal rate and prompted the cancellation of many flights and cruise ship visits.
Hotel Los Flamingos, a pink building perched on a cliff where waiters climb trees to pull down coconuts for drinks, had few guests and only two rooms with foreign visitors, according to hotel workers who insisted they had not heard the shooting the night before.
Tourism is Mexico's third-largest source of legal foreign income, after oil and remittances.
"At the resorts they basically tell you not to venture out," Johnson said.
"It's pretty shocking. It's really sad. This a huge problem," added Pelaquin, an insurance analyst whose friends already thought her trip to Mexico was risky because of swine flu. "Mexicans grow the drugs and send them to the U.S. where Americans buy them so we can't blame it just on this country."
President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers across Mexico to battle drug violence. More than 10,800 people have died since the offensive began in December 2006.
Although foreign tourists very rarely get caught in the violence, shootouts and kidnappings have become more frequent in resort areas such as Acapulco and Cancun. In 2007, a couple from Canada was wounded when someone fired into a hotel lobby in Acapulco.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_...drug_war_mexico