Blog dedicated to reporting on Mexican drug cartels
on the border line between the US and Mexico
.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Matamoros mayor warns about "grave risks"' in her city

Leticia Salazer, foto de Twitter
By Chris Covert
Rantburg.com

The mayor of the northern Mexican border city of Matamoros is warning residents about extreme risks associated with traveling in the city, according to Mexican news reports.

Leticia Salazar took to Twitter Monday afternoon to warn her constituents about risks from road blocks and presumably shootings in the city.  According to a news account which appeared in the online edition of Milenio news daily, four photographs which were taken Monday afternoon and posted to Twitter, showed two roadblocks and students inside a classroom ducking to the floor, presumably to avoid gun fire.

A check of Twitter showed very little in the way of information about the elevated risk in Matamoros, mosly reactions to Señora Salazar's warnings.  Two events in the last three days may have been a factor in any elevated risk.

Friday a hand grenade was detonated in Ciudad Victoria, state capital of Tamaulipas, which did some damage to a metal overhead door at the residence of father of Alejandro Etienne, mayor of Ciudad Victoria.  Later a painted banner, colloquially known as a narcomanta or narcopinta said to be from a local Los Zetas commander in the city appeared, as a warning to the government.

Another incident took place in Brownsville Texas, directly across the border from Matamoros,  Monday when a young woman identified in a ValleyCentral.com English language report as Dayna Velasquez, 21, was allegedly caught with 12 kilograms of cocaine inside the vehicle she was driving.

A news account which appeared in the online edition of El Diario de Chihuahua news daily said that shootout began at noon in San Carlos colony and the spread to other sectors of the city including on Avenida Pedro Cardenas.  No reports have emerged as to casualties, which is not unusual in shootouts in Tamaulipas border cities.

Starting in 2010 some of the worse intergang fighting between the Los Zetas cartel and their bitterest rivals, the Gulf Cartel took place in Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo and in Reynosa as shooters fought openly against one another, the fighting of which often produced  roadblocks.  Much of the violence at the time went unreported because, reportedly local press were under death threats from local drug gangs not to publish news about the activities.

During those years local Twitter users  as well as local government officials used Twitter to report gunfights and shootings and shootouts.

With the election of president Enrique Pena Nieto almost two years ago, the government got into the news spiking business by stopping the practice of reporting on individual incidents and compiling series of incidents into one, thereby reducing -- and improving -- crime statistics.  According to Tijuana, Baja California based Zetas magazine, only one part of the new anti crime strategy has worked: the statistics have improved, but not the violence, which is as bad as it has ever been.

Señora Salazar has run afoul of Mexico's Secretaria de Gobernacion (SEGOB), or interior minister Miguel Osorio Chong before, last December, when she suggested she may call for a curfew in the city after a series of shootout between rival criminal gangs, which left 13 dead.  At the time Osorio Chong said it would be illegal for her to impose a curfew, which may not be completely true.

Curfews in Mexican localities have been called for or imposed by local government officials because of drug and gang related violence, including, reportedly in Piedras Negras in Coahuila state in 2012 and Jimenez in Chihuahua state in late 2013 because of the extreme violence from local drug gang rivalries.

Lately the federal government's anti crime strategy has undergone a transparent shift as former head of Mexico's Comision Nacional de Seguridad, Manuel Mandrgon y Kalb has left his post, and was replaced by Monte Alejandro Rubido.

According to a news report last week in Milenio, several Mexican senators have noted that the new appointee signals a strategy shift more towards then strategy of former president Felipe Calderon  Hinojosa.

It remains to be seen if Calderon's hands off strategy with regard to the press will be followed as well.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War nad national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

SEGOB: Enrique 'Kike' Plancarte Solís Confirmed Dead

Updated April 1, 2014
Federal officials confirmed that Enrique "Kike" Plancarte Solís, one of the leaders of the Caballeros Templarios was shot by members of the Navy during a confrontation.

The incident took place in the municipality of Colón, 20 minutes from Querétaro, where about 200 members of the Mexican Navy and Army conducted an operation, which lasted for 24 hours, in order to locate the Michoacán capo and included the searching of dozens of homes; Joaquín López Dóriga, a columnist for Milenio, announced on his Twitter page.


Mexican Navy operation in Querétaro (Quadratín)
According to early reports, Plancarte Solis was located near a soccer field.  A confrontation broke out after he resisted arrest in which he was finally killed.

Kike Plancarte was identified by the Attorney General of Mexico as one of the main leaders of the Knights Templar, along with Servando Gomez "La Tuta".

He was accused of organized crime, drug crimes, kidnappings, murder, and robbery.  The PGR offered a reward of 10 million pesos for information leading to his location.
Alleged church where Enrique hid in

Other earlier reports from social media stated that he was reported to have been hiding in a church where they then arrested him.  The info came from someone who allegedly arrested him.

From SEGOB's Twitter page:


The identity of Enrique Plancarte is being verified, he was presumably killed in a clash with @SEMAR_mx.  More information tomorrow (April 1).

Update April 1, 2014:


Coordinated actions between the Mexican Navy (SEMAR) and Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) and PGR located Enrique Plancarte Solís in Colón, Querétaro on March 30

Since daylight, the Mexican Navy in coordination with the Mexican Army, set different security perimeters in the area

Yesterday at 19:00 hours, the navy identified a person with the characteristics of Enrique Plancarte in Colón, QRO

Noting the presence of federal forces, he tried to hide and when they indicated him to stop, he responded with gun fire

Navy personnel repelled the attack and neutralized him. They provided him first aid but he died when they were going to transfer him

The body was airlifted to the facilities of the 17th Military Zone located in Querétaro.

PGR Personnel proceeded to conduct forensic test to confirm the identity of the person

 Fingerprint tests were made on both hands; they compared images in order to confirm features

The results of the forensic tests used confirm that the person killed was Enrique Plancarte Solís: Commissioner Rubido

All data confirmed has already been handed over to SEIDO from the PGR: Monte Alejandro Rubido

Enrique Plancarte Solís was linked to at least 30 criminal investigations: Monte Alejandro Rubido

Tomás Zerón de Lucio from the PGR presented the results of the forensic tests that confirm the taking down of Enrique Plancarte Solís

The ten-print fingerprints were compared to the ones in the database of the National Public Security System: PGR

Facial features from Enrique Plancarte Solís / Enrique Alfredo Suárez Solís was compared with the deceased


The alleged body:



Lieutenant of El Chapo, "El Tigre" Confirmed Killed



Germán Ceniceros Ibarra died in confrontation with the army

Germán Ceniceros Ibarra and three others were in a clash with the Mexican army the night of Friday, March 28, in the community the Sinaloa, Navolato municipality. 

Versions collected in the scene, established that a military patrol passed through the town when it was attacked with bullets and grenades by suspected gunmen. The confrontation occurred around 18:00 hours. 

At least four soldiers were wounded and taken to the clinic of the Issste of Culiacan. No serious injuries.

Other versions explain that the army received notice that armed men were in a house in this community and searched for them. 

Responding to aggression, the suspects fled taking road to Highway Culiacan Navolato.  They were riding in a black Hummer, when the driver lost control and crashed into a canal.
Germán Ceniceros Ibarra was at the wheel, and was killed on impact (so says unofficial sources). One more accompanying him also died Two more of the assassins were shot, but not seriously and are incarcerated.

Previously, there was no official identification of the dead or wounded soldiers, but unofficial police sources told Ríodoce that there was no doubt that the fallen man at the wheel of the Hummer was Germán Ceniceros Ibarra.

The PGR delegation waited until Saturday the presentation of weapons and ammunition and insured and informally spoke that there was also some detainees. 

The history of the 'Jaguar'
Initially it wasn't realized that the man killed it was El Jaguar. 

Germán Ceniceros Ibarra, who achieved the rank of Commander after 14 years of service in the Navolato municipal police, he was appointed in January 2008. Director Gabino Terrazas said that the designation of Germán Ceniceros Ibarra  was supported on an assessment of the performance and analysis of his career. 

Germán Ceniceros Ibarra had held the positions of Deputy Commander of the Municipal police, Deputy Director of the Municipal jail and operational commander in the administration of Víctor Godoy. 

It did not take long for the real mission of  Germán Ceniceros Ibarra, to be revealed while in the Corporation.

On  October 27th  of that year, at least 15-vehicle military convoy, arrived at the home of Cruz Carrillo Fuentes - in the heart of Navolato.   Cruz is the younger brother of Amado Carrillo the Lord of the Skies. They asked for the young man, and in front of his wife and children took him away.

Along with the military a patrol of the municipal police of Navolato had arrived at the home, including Germán Ceniceros Ibarra and his bodyguards. Cruz's wife recognized him, and thus he was denounced. 

On the same day was found a burned body at a railway station on the Culiacan-Costa Rica road. The body was taken to the forensic medical service for identification, but after the autopsy, two days later, the corpse was stolen by an armed command. 

The authorities kept quiet about the identity of the corpse and it was not until December of that year when the Attorney general of the Republic, Eduardo Medina Mora, in a year end meeting with journalists, said José Cruz Carrillo had been slain in Culiacán. 

And then Doña Aurora Fuentes, who formally denounced his disappearance, said that if he was dead, it was because the army had murdered him. Already had been accused the army of facts and with Germán Ceniceros Ibarra and his brother, Andres, also police, leading the military operation to take José Cruz Carrillo. 

Against the Mayor
The afternoon of November 4, 2008, a group of assassins perpetrated a shooting attack against the municipal President of Navolato, Fernando García, where three employees of his administration  were killed and at least two were wounded. 

The victims were the aldermen Andrés Carrillo and César Villaescusa Gastelum and César Villaescusa Urquiza, his father, who had been a candidate for municipal President. 

The convoy circulated along the road of Navolato-Altata, between Bariometo and the flag, when the command massacred them. Two weeks earlier, the Chief Clerk of the municipality, Fabián Rodríguez Parra, was gunned down in La Palma, Audit Office of Villa Angel Flores.
The authorities never explained the attack nor wanted to speculate openly, but unofficially these facts linked to the killing of Cruz Carrillo Fuentes. 

Something akin to hell
From that fact, Navolato became an inferno. Dozens of policemen were killed, more than fifty resigned in 2009, the Mayor called the people to voluntarily obey a curfew from ten in the evening. 

Doña Aurora Fuentes has always had the certainty that in the taking of his son Cruz and subsequent murder, Germán Ceniceros Ibarra was involved because she was told so by her daughter-in-law, María Elena Retamoza. 

That day that he was taken, soldiers had closed several streets,. they  knocked on the door and she  opened. They ordered her not to interfere, they then took him away. 

From the door of his house, María Elena saw that they took her husband to patrol 1430 of Navolato, manned by the police agents German and Andres Ceniceros Ibarra. The police vehicle was guarded by 15 Hummer military vehicles, 13 of them with ID numbers: 

ID: 2441, 2480, 4026, 4044, 4048, 4057, 4058, 4149, 4151, 4158, 4161, 4166 and 4167, all preceded by the 092.

The next day, Tuesday, October 28 - related sources said, according to Sra. Aurora, a municipal patrol appeared with vests and police weapons, but agents never appeared."
Germán Ceniceros Ibarra had been transformed into 'El Jaguar'.

Since then, the police said that he had gone to work with Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán. 

Sources of Ríodoce confirm that Jaguar ended up as head of assassins of Dámaso López Núñez in the areas of Navolato and Eldorado. 

Former police commender, had  in his possession a driver's license in the name of Sergio Enrique Cisneros Angulo, but  fingerprints confirmed his identity. 

Source: RioDoce also posted by SiskiyouKid

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Six Men Found Executed In Oaxaca




By: Pedro Matías

Saturday March 29, 2014, Oaxaca, Oaxaca—Today the Attorney General found six people executed with a coup de grace to the forehead and several bullet wounds throughout the body in San Miguel Soyaltepec.

Apparently three of the victims are from Oaxaca and the rest are from Tierra Blanca, Veracruz.

The discovery was made on Saturday around 10:00 a.m. on the diversion of Calería, near Pochota de Chichicazapa, where a taxi from Tierra Blanca, Veracruz was also left abandoned.

Attorney Héctor Joaquín Carrillo confirmed that the Assistant Attorney General’s Office for High Stakes Crime is already investigating the case in which six people were killed and left in Oaxaca territory.

The official believes that this is a result of a “cockroach” effect following the operation that took place in Veracruz in which 10 alleged Zetas were killed.

Carrillo said that among the six executed, two people have a history of selling narcotics.

Elements of the State Investigations Agency (AEI) headquartered in San Miguel Soyaltepec moved to the dirt road leading to the site Nuevo Paso Nazareno where six male bodies were found.

The Regional Attorney, Pedro Antonio Ruiz, learned about the case and ordered the removal of four bodies that were found in a white Pontiac van with license plates MFW6009 belonging to the State of Mexico.

The other two men were found dead at the side of the van, in a white Nissan Tsuru taxi, with red stripes, and license plates 14-54SCH belonging to Tierra Blanca with taxi number 314, Veracruz.

Ruiz said that the six bodies were tied up.

It was reported that three are from Oaxaca, Abel Thomas Miguel “El Mocho”, 38, his brother Ángel “El Peyuco”, 22, Francisco Javier Vega Gómez, the taxi driver from La Reformita Oaxaca ; Javier Sarralangue (Father) and Javier Sarralangue (Son) who were nicknamed “Los Tigrillos” were from Tierra Blanca and another man with an alias of “El Muletas” was also identified.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

4 die in Sinaloa state

A total of four men were shot to death in an exchange of gunfire involving the Mexican security forces Friday night, according to Mexican news reports.

According to a news account posted on the online edition of El Debate news daily, three of the four men who were killed were identified as Juan Francisco Espinoza Lopez, Sergio Enrique Ceniceros Angulo and Jonathan Atadeo Lagunes.

According to various news reports, a Mexican Naval Infantry road patrol intercepted a convoy in ejido Sinaloa de Navolato in Culican municipality, one vehicle of which was a Humvee with the victims, and exchanged gunfire with the occupants and others in the convoy.

According to a separate news account in Milenio news daily, the confrontation took place in two areas in the ejido and involved hand grenades as well as small arms fire.  Some elements of the convoy had dismounted, and so marines continued their pursuits into corn field all the while firing their weapons. 

Three marines were wounded in the exchange including one hit by grenade shrapnel.

The Milenio report noted that the commander of the Mexican 9th Military Zone, General Miguel Hurtado Ochoa had visited the scene in the aftermath, but to explanation was made as to why such a senior commander would be in the field.

News reports suggested that the fourth victim was a former Navolato municipal police commander, identified as  German Ceniceros Ibarra, AKA Jaguar, who went missing back in 2008.

Chris Covert writes Mexican Drug War and national political news for Rantburg.com and BorderlandBeat.com  He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com

Friday, March 28, 2014

Radio Tecnico: How The Zetas Cartel Took Over Mexico With Walkie-Talkies



On September 16, 2008, Carl Pike, the deputy head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division, watched live video feeds from a command center outside Washington, D.C., as federal agents fanned out across dozens of U.S. cities. In Dallas, a team in SWAT gear tossed a flash-bang grenade into a suburban home and, once inside, discovered six pounds of cocaine behind a stove, and a stockpile of guns. At a used-car dealer’s house in Carmel, Indiana, agents pulled bricks of cocaine from a secret compartment in his Audi sedan, while state troopers dragged a stove-size safe onto the lawn and went at it with a sledgehammer.

In the coming weeks, the net widened to include caches of assault rifles, a Mexico-bound 18-wheeler with drug money hidden in fresh produce, and a crooked Texas sheriff who helped traffic narcotics through his county. In Mexico City, a financier was arrested for laundering drug money through a minor-league soccer team named the Raccoons (and an avocado farm). After one especially large bust, when it came time for a “dope on the table” photo, there was in fact no table big enough to support the thousands of tightly bundled kilos of confiscated cocaine. They had to be stacked in the back parking lot of a police station. 

The raids and arrests were the final stage of a DEA-led investigation called Project Reckoning—18 months, 64 cities, 200 agencies—intended to cripple Mexico’s Gulf Cartel. Over the past two decades, the organization had built a drug empire that spanned across Mexico and into the U.S. It had become pervasive, hyper-violent, brazen. Cartel operatives had smuggled billions of dollars’ worth of narcotics into the U.S. 

They had assassinated Mexican politicians and corrupted entire police departments. One of the organization’s leaders had famously brandished a gold-plated .45 at two agents from the DEA and FBI traveling through northeastern Mexico. The cartel had even formed its own paramilitary unit, a band of former Mexican police and special-forces soldiers called the Zetas, to seize territory and dispatch rivals. The notorious syndicate became known as La Compañia, or The Company. (click to enlarge 'Inside Zetas Network side bar below)

Project Reckoning, authorities proclaimed, had dealt La Compañia’s business a “substantial blow.” The DEA’s Pike likened it to taking out 64 cartel-owned Walmarts. And once all the doors had been kicked in, the haul was indeed staggering: $90 million in cash, 61 tons of narcotics, and enough weapons to equip an insurgency. Among the 900 people rounded up across the U.S. and Mexico, the Justice Department indicted dealers, transporters, money counters, teen gangsters, and even the owner of a Quiznos franchise. One of those swept up in the net was a 37-year-old resident of McAllen, Texas, named Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada.

He seemed, at first, not particularly significant—a luckless guppy caught swimming with sharks. His arrest barely warranted mention in the local paper. His house, a well-maintained white-brick rancher with an arbor of pink flowers over the front door, contained no cocaine or caches of AK-47s. He lacked an extensive rap sheet and in fact seemed to have no criminal record at all. On the outskirts of McAllen, he ran a small, nondescript shop that installed car alarms and sold two-way radios. (for best viewing, enlarge to full size Del Toro's Plea Agreement-then adjust size to preference)
In the weeks that followed, a different picture began to emerge. Del Toro Estrada was neither capo nor killer, but he played a critical role in The Company. According to federal prosecutors, the shop owner—who went by the alias Tecnico—had served as The Company’s communications expert. He was the cartel’s in-house geek, the head of IT, and he had used his expertise to help engineer its brutal rise to power. Del Toro Estrada had not only set up secret camera networks to spy on Mexican officials and surveil drug stash houses, but he also built from the ground up an elaborate, covert communications network that covered much of the country. 

This system enabled the cartel to smuggle narcotics by the ton into the U.S., as well as billions of dollars in drug money back into Mexico. Most remarkably, it had provided The Company with a Gorgon-like omniscience or, according to Pike, the ability to track everything related to its narcotics distribution: drug loads but also Mexican police, military, even U.S. border-patrol agents. That a cartel had begun employing communications experts was likely news to most of law enforcement. That it had pulled off a massive engineering project spanning most of Mexico—and done so largely in secret—was unparalleled in the annals of criminal enterprise.

The godfather of the Gulf Cartel was not a drug kingpin but a contrabandista named Juan Guerra who began smuggling bootleg whiskey into Texas during Prohibition. In the decades that followed, Guerra expanded into prostitution and gambling along the Rio Grande, building out a small but profitable criminal enterprise. The business eventually passed to Guerra’s nephew, Juan Garcia Abrego, who in the mid-1980s identified an opportunity. Several years before, American drug agents had started to crack down on cocaine-supply lines from Colombia into Florida. 

Garcia Abrego approached the besieged Colombians with an offer: Instead of taking a transporter’s customary small cash percentage, he would guarantee cocaine deliveries through Mexico into the U.S. in exchange for 50 percent of each load. It was a riskier but immensely more profitable arrangement, and it eventually birthed one of Mexico’s first major narcotics organizations, the Gulf Cartel. In 1995, the FBI placed Garcia Abrego on its Ten Most Wanted list, the first drug trafficker to earn the distinction.

Garcia Abrego led the cartel until 1996, when he was arrested by Mexican police outside the city of Monterrey. His successor was a jug-eared, mercurial former auto mechanic and aspiring gangster named Osiel Cardenas Guillen, a.k.a. The Friend Killer. In the late 1990s, hoping to surround himself with an impenetrable security ring while also creating a lethal mercenary force, Cardenas Guillen formed a paramilitary unit composed largely of defectors from the Mexican police and military. 

Some, like Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano, a.k.a. The Executioner, were commandos from an elite American-trained airborne special-forces unit. It was an epochal moment in cartel development. The Zetas—who reportedly took the name from their first commander’s military radio call sign, Z1—were highly trained and brutally efficient. They built remote narco-camps to train new recruits in military tactics, weapons, and communications. They recruited other special-forces soldiers from Guatemala, known as Kaibiles, a name derived from an indigenous leader who bedeviled Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century.

They secured new drug routes, attacked other gangs, and even instituted an accounting system—the Zetas kept detailed ledgers and employed a dedicated team of number crunchers—that has since become nearly as legendary as the group’s capacity for bloodletting. “Before the Zetas, it was basically low-quality foot soldiers and enforcer types,” says Robert Bunker, a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. “What the Zetas brought to the table was that [military] operational capability. The other cartels didn’t know anything about this. It revolutionized the whole landscape.” 
It’s impossible to say exactly why the Zetas chose to build the radio network, but given their military and law-enforcement background, it seems likely that Z1 and his capos understood that a widespread communications system would provide a crucial competitive edge over other cartels. Radio was the clear choice. Unlike cell phones, which are expensive, traceable, and easily tapped, radio equipment is cheap, easy to set up, and more secure. Handheld walkie-talkies, antennas, and signal repeaters to boost transmissions are all available at a good radio shop or from a Motorola distributor. A radio network could provide communications in many of the remote areas in Mexico where the cartel operated. And, if they suspected law enforcement eavesdropping, the cartel’s drug smugglers and gunmen could easily switch frequencies or use commercially available software to garble voice transmissions. 

How Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada was tapped to develop the covert radio network also remains a mystery, but as his system grew, it supplied the Zetas with what’s called a command-and-control capacity. “It essentially linked all the different members of the cartel—the people doing the trafficking and the people doing the protection—so there was a communication between them,” says Pike, the DEA special agent.

Armed with handheld radios, the cartel’s street-corner halcones, or hawks, could help commanders avoid arrest by alerting them whenever police set up checkpoints. A midlevel boss in Nuevo Laredo could monitor a semitruck carrying several tons of cocaine as it trundled across the border into Texas. Most crucially, Zetas gunmen could use the system to attack and seize plazas, or smuggling corridors, held by other drug gangs. 

“With a network like this, you can take what resources you have and maximize them for effectiveness,” says Bunker. “If [the Zetas] are going into a different cartel’s area, they can bring resources in,” such as weapons, vehicles, and reinforcements. “It means for every one enforcer or foot soldier, you get a multiplier effect. From a command-and-control perspective, it’s phenomenal.”
With the advantage of Del Toro Estrada’s radio network, The Company grew quickly, dominating rival groups—but lasting relationships are fleeting in the criminal underworld. In 2010, after several years of internal friction, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas severed ties. (Causes of the split are murky, but many analysts say the breaking point occurred when the Gulf Cartel kidnapped and killed the Zetas’ chief of finance after failing to persuade him to switch allegiance.)
In the years that followed, the influence of the Gulf Cartel, once the most powerful in Mexico, waned dramatically. At the same time, the influence of the Zetas grew rapidly. Their business portfolio expanded to include drug running as well as kidnapping, human smuggling, pirating DVDs, and even selling black-market oil. In some regions, they began to operate with such impunity that their authority eclipsed that of the Mexican government itself. The Zetas’ military training and ultraviolent tactics were crucial for propelling their rise to power, but one other factor was essential: After splitting from the Gulf Cartel, it was the Zetas who maintained control of the radio network.

Alleged Caballeros Templarios Shoot at Police In Morelia




By: Camila Luna


During the early hours of Friday, a group of armed civilians attacked the facilities of the Citizen Protection of the Attorney General of the State (Centro de Protección Ciudadana de la Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado) in the west of the Michoacán capital.

According to police reports, it was around 4:00 am when two trucks filled with heavily armed men arrived at the Center for Citizen Protection belonging to the Attorney General of Justice of Michoacán, located between avenues Francisco I. Madero and Pedregal.

After getting out of the vehicles, the criminals shot up the building leaving one policeman injured (who was reported as stable) and severe damage to the building structures and the facility located beside it, as well as damaging six police vehicles.

Within the Center for Citizen Protection, there were a dozen ministerial policemen who tried to repel the attack, however, the criminals fled.


After initial investigations were carried out, about 100 shell casings from AK-47’s, 7.62x39mm, and AR-15’s, .223, were found at the scene.


Almost simultaneously, a second attack on a base of the Municipal Public Security located in the north of Morelia near Estadio Morelos was also recorded. 

Ten Alleged Zetas Shot Down in Veracruz



By: Noé Zavaleta
Xalapa, Veracruz- Ten alleged members of Los Zetas were killed this afternoon by members of the State Police and the Army, after repelling an armed attack, after trying to search a particular house in the village of El Sabinal, in the municipality of Perote.

The spokesperson for Javier Duarte, Alberto Silva Ramos, presumed on his Twitter account that with this operation, the state government, with the support of federal forces, took down one of the “most dangerous” organized crime cell.

In a statement, the government of Duarte said that after an operation carried out to look for kidnapping groups, a safe house was found in the municipality.

In Perote, located 64.6 kilometers from the state capital, complaints from citizens of missing persons (mostly young women), homicides by firearms, and finding clandestine graves in mountainous areas are common.

Duarte’s government reported that as a result of the confrontation, nine men and a woman was killed; a policeman was also injured, however it was only a grazed bullet wound.

At the safe house, federal security forces secured: 10 rifles, tactical equipment, cartridges, ammunition, shirts with “false insignias” of the Federal Police, and hats with fake shields usually worn by the Federal Ministerial Police.

“Preliminary information suggests that it was one of the most dangerous organized crime cells in the central area of the state, presumably belonging to Los Zetas, dedicated to kidnapping,” said the PGJE.
(photo on next page)