At least 15 killed in shootout in Mexico between police and drug gangs

Shootout between police and two rival drug gangs in northern Mexico has left at least 15 dead. It was a predawn battle near Las Varas and it began ass a firefight between rival drug trafficking gangs and escalated when police arrived.
The region is hotly disputed territory for Mexico's drug cartels because its mountainous terrain and proximity to the border of the US make it a strategic corridor for sending cross shipment of narcotics to America.
This has been reported in thestatesman.com dated 6 July 2017.

Fifteen people belonging to the drug gangs were killed and another five are arrested. This is the latest in a series of deadly clashes between police, rival drug gangs and warring factions within one of the drug cartels which has been in turmoil since its kingpin was extradited to the United States in January.
It seems last Friday, 17 gunmen were killed in a shootout with police on a highway in Sinaloa. Incidentally, May was the deadliest month in Mexico since the government began keeping track in 1997 - it accounted for more than 2100 homicides.


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Horror in Mexico - 32 bodies and nine human heads found in clandestine graves

Investigators have discovered 32 bodies and nine human heads in clandestine mass graves in southern Mexico where rival drug gangs have been engaged in a wave of extortion, kidnappings and turf battles. Soldiers and police have found the graves at an outlaw camp in Guerrero state following a tip-off that people were being held at the site located near a mountain in the municipality of Zitlala.
The police rescued a kidnap victim and discovered 12 bodies and human remains in coolers. Subsequently, after further excavations of the site, a total of 32 bodies and nine human heads came to the surface.
This has been reported in thehindu.com dated 25 November 2016.

The Guerrero Coordinating Group has said that soldiers were combing the area to check for any more clandestine graves. Work is also on to identify the bodies and the killers - the drug gangs frequently decapitate their victims.
Incidentally, residents of the community of Tixtla, Guerrero had found nine decapitated bodies along a highway and the prosecutors are checking out whether the nine heads found in Zitlala have links to these bodies. Guerrero has seen an upsurge in gang-related violence and, the largely rural, impoverished state had 1,832 reported homicides in the first 10 months of 2016.


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Mexican police discover truck with bazooka to send drugs into the United States

Drug peddlers continue to come up with innovative measures to spread drugs and the latest one is from Mexico where Police have discovered a truck fitted with a home made bazooka designed to send consignment of drugs into the United States.
Mexico’s National Security Commission has announced over the weekend that federal police officers have found a panel van kitted out with an air compressor and a metal tube nearly 10 feet long. They believe the contraption was used as a bazooka to blast packets of narcotics across the border into the United States.
This has been reported in foxnews.com dated 19 September 2016.

The van was designed with a cut in the roof toward the rear to enable the tube to be used to launch projectiles, possibly from close to the border into the United States. The van was found abandoned in the town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, across the border from Douglas, Arizona. It had no license plates, and it had been reported stolen in Hermosillo, some 220 miles south of Agua Prieta, on July 1.
Illicit drugs are smuggled into the US from Mexico in a number of ways like hidden in cargo, carted in tunnels, via drug mules, catapulted or carried by drones. In the opinion of the authorities, drug traffickers have been using homemade cannons since as early as 2012. Packets of crystal meth, cocaine and marijuana that might have been fired from such cannons have turned up on the U.S. side of the border.


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Fight between rival drug gangs inside Mexico prison leaves at least 52 dead

It was a fight between rival drug gangs inside a prison in northern Mexico in which as many as 52 inmates have been killed. As confirmed by Jaime Rodriguez, the governor of Nuevo Leon state, 52 prisoners had been killed and another 12 injured at Topo Chico near the city of Monterrey. Riot police and ambulances were deployed to the scene after there were news about gunshots and a fire at the facility. There were no reports of any escapes.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 11 February 2016.

The fight was between a faction led by a member of the infamous Zetas drug cartel also known as Z-27. This gang once held control of the area around Monterrey. The leader was a suspect in the 2010 shooting to death of American David Hartley on Texas' Falcon Lake. He had been shot while he was touring the lake with his wife on Jet Skis.
The fight at Topo Chico was apparently between supporters of this gang and a rival who has been identified by local news media as a member of the rival Gulf drug cartel.
The inmates had set fire to a storage area, which caused the thick cloud of smoke and it happens a few days ahead of a planned visit by Pope Francis to a nearby prison in Mexico's far north.
Such fights keep taking place because of overpopulated prisons in which inmates from different drug gangs are housed.


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Scuba diver smuggles cocaine across US-Mexico border via underwater tunnel

Drug smugglers have now resorted to using scuba divers to transport cocaine across the US-Mexico borders and this has been admitted by a Honduran national who has been apprehended while trying to smuggle drugs into the US via an underwater tunnel.
He was arrested in his scuba gear and a breathing tank with a "rebreather" to prevent surface bubbles, apart from 25 vacuum-sealed and giftwrapped packages that held a total of 55 pounds of cocaine. He has pleaded guilty in federal court in San Diego. He would face 20-years in prison if sentenced.
This has been reported in foxnews.com dated 20 August 2015.

As revealed by Border Patrol agents, they discovered near him a soaked Padilla in a wetsuit next to the All-American Canal, about 7 miles east of Calexico, California.
The police also discovered a 150-foot-long tunnel that began at a house in Mexicali, Mexico, and ended under the water of the canal. The modus operandi was to put the drugs on a trolley system on the dry Mexico side of the tunnel. The smugglers would then use scuba gear to retrieve it from under the canal's water from an opening normally invisible because of being obscured by rocks.
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43 students missing in Mexico were kidnapped, murdered and incinerated by police

#iguala #mexico The revelation that 43 students, who had disappeared in Mexico in September last, had in fact been kidnapped, murdered and incinerated by the police is bound to send shock waves everywhere. The revelation has been made by officials who had been investigating the disappearance of the students.
Families of the victims were under the impression that they were still alive - but Mexico's attorney general has confirmed that all the students were killed and burned and subsequently, their remains were thrown into a river. He has rejected claims that the army had any involvement in the mass killing.
Of course, he has indicated that the investigation will not be closed till the culprits are arrested.
The forensic evidence would tend to suggest that the fuel and temperature of a fire at a garbage dump which was used to dispose the bodies was capable of turning 43 bodies into ashes. The Mexican authorities have succeeded in identifying only one body based on DNA test and Austrian scientists who are working on the case have indicated that it is impossible to identify the remaining victims.
Apparently, the conclusion that all 43 students have been killed is based on the testimony of Felipe Rodriguez Salgado, a prime suspect who was arrested a fortnight ago. This man is one of 99 people who have been detained in connection with the crime. The investigation was a massive one and involved 39 reported confessions, nearly 400 declarations, almost 500 forensic tests, 16 raids apart from two reconstructions.
It is also reported that all the 43 students were men who were getting trained to become teachers. The bus in which they were traveling was attacked in the city of Iguala by police who then handed them over to gangs.