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on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Monday, January 31, 2011

Five Gunmen Die in Shootout with Army Soldiers in Monterrey

The Associated Press
Five suspected drug cartel hit men were killed in a shootout with army soldiers in Greater Monterrey, Mexico’s business capital, officials said Saturday.

The Defense Secretariat said in a statement that a group of “organized crime” gunmen carried out a gunfire and grenade attack at around midnight Friday on a military convoy that was patrolling the city of Santa Catarina – about 15 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of downtown Monterrey – as part of a crackdown on cartel violence.

The soldiers “acted in self-defense” and repelled the aggression, killing five of the assailants and seizing five automatic rifles, a handgun, two vehicles, several rounds of ammunition and ammunition clips, the secretariat said.

It added that two innocent bystanders were wounded by the grenades and taken to a hospital for treatment.

A turf war between the Gulf cartel and former allies Los Zetas in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, whose capital is Monterrey, left more than 670 people, including a record 75 police officers, dead last year.

Monterrey, home to more than 50,000 corporations, including some of the largest multinational businesses in Mexico, fears for its future if the violence is not stopped.

This is a very difficult time, perhaps the most difficult in the recent history of Nuevo Leon” state, Gov. Rodrigo Medina said earlier this week.

Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal, for his part, said the cities in the metro area have been overwhelmed by organized crime groups and lack the “capacity and armament” to deal with them.

The surge in violence is hurting the hospitality industry, which saw average hotel occupancy rates fall as low as 41 percent in 2010, while the average occupancy rate for the year was 60 percent

The Monterrey metropolitan area, which is made up of nine cities with a total population of 4 million, has experienced about 50 attacks involving grenades and bombs, including a car bombing, against police stations.

The city is also being plagued by so-called “narco-blockades” in which members of youth gangs recruited by drug cartels use trucks, automobiles and buses to block some of the main thoroughfares and slow army deployments.

Cemex, the world’s third-largest cement company, is among the industrial corporations that call Monterrey home.

Alfa, the world’s No. 1 producer of aluminum engine heads and blocks; Femsa, Coca-Cola’s second-largest bottler; and Vitro, North America’s biggest glass producer, are among the other industrial powerhouses that have headquarters in the city.

Elsewhere, four people were killed Friday in a gangland shootout near a preschool in the western Mexican state of Nayarit, local officials said.

In a preliminary report, the state Attorney General’s Office said the deaths were the result of a gun battle between gunmen from rival criminal organizations active in that area of western Mexico.

The clash took place “at a house behind a preschool” in the town of Pantanal, near the state capital of Tepic, a spokesman for the state AG’s office said.

Local media said the preschool was empty at the time of the shootout and that traces of blood were found in several of its classrooms.

These latest clashes come amid spiraling organized crime-related violence in Mexico, including 15,273 drug-linked homicides nationwide last year.

A total of 34,612 people were killed between December 1, 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office and began deploying tens of thousands of army soldiers and federal police to drug war hotspots, and Jan. 12 of this year, the president’s office says.

The strategy has led to the elimination of several crime bosses and record drug seizures over the past four years, including the confiscation of 23 tons of cocaine in a single operation in November 2007.

Yet the amount of seized drugs represents a small percentage of the estimated total that originates in or is smuggled through Mexico.

9 comments:

  1. Si, los policias son los meros meros, pa que se hacen majes...

    ReplyDelete
  2. if this was any where else in the world ..these "gunmen" would be called ..insurgents ...terrorists...guerilla fighters...or something else ..only in Mexico are they called gunmen...is this an attempt to soften the effect ..

    seems like guys who launch attacks on army convoys are a little more than "gunmen"

    isn't this the kind of thing one would equate with guerilla warfare or something


    just wondering

    "L"B

    ReplyDelete
  3. Guerrilla is the diminutive of the Spanish word guerra "war", literally "little war".

    "Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or "irregulars") used military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately."

    Source: Wikipedia, which as just as good as any other I found.

    This seems like the closest description that I have found for what the narcos are engaged in in Mexico. I think by now these warring factions of "cartels" are in it for the adreline rush as these terrorist acts become an end in themselves.. (for them) with no end in sight.

    See also essaywritingblog.com, "Compare Contrast Guerrilla Warefare ad Urban Terrorism")

    ReplyDelete
  4. @ layla

    yeap that about defines it

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very good defination of Guerilla warfare. I might add entire countries have been taken over by means of guerilla warfare...United States from British rule more recetly Angola, Cuba and Afghanistan from the Russians come to mind...Guerrilla warfare is a very powerful form of combat! rtc

    ReplyDelete
  6. after the attack against fort plaza del arco..nothing surprises me ..these guys get a nose full of coke...a few pesos in their hands and they will do anything

    and seems like half the time most of them get away

    "L"B

    ReplyDelete
  7. It seems to me that what really needs to happen is to get all the cartels on the same page and work together. I mean the demand for drugs will never stop so thr will always be supply and demand so instead of killing everyone rivals and regualer people and police that they should have a sit down with all the cartels and work together this way the violence stops and people can not be afraid to walk outside thr houses. It should be a simple fix if they thought about it and stopped being so dam greedy. I mean thr is plenty of money in the stupid drug game to go around and if they worked together they would save themselfs billions of dollars and not have to kill everyone. Just a thought since nothing else seems to work. Thr will always be drug dealers as long as thr is drug users and this would probably save thousands of lifes. i mean if people want to kill themselfs using drugs thats on them but to have so many people die in order to control supplying the drugs then why not work together. they could all eliminate at least 75% of thr cartel members which would save on paying them and all the gund ammo and pay to everyone to watch out for them they would all make more money and not have to kill everyone they see.

    ReplyDelete
  8. they just don't want to play together like good little children..greed ..ego..you know the same ol shit

    "L"B

    ReplyDelete
  9. Any illegal activity that ivolves alot of money is gonna pull every last wannabe gangbanger / cartel member out of the woodwork for a piece of the money pie. This won't change either as long as there are drugs and drug users.

    "Eliminating 75% of cartel members..is what they are all 'shooting for'...

    ReplyDelete

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