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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2007 
22 Killed in Mexico Drug Shootouts
 Agence France Presse
| | Police killed 15 gunmen in a fierce gunbattle just south of the Arizona border after tracking the assailants into the nearby hills with a helicopter. |
Fifteen alleged drug traffickers and two civilians were killed Wednesday in a shootout with police in Mexico after gunmen killed five police in an earlier attack, officials said.
The clashes took place in the northwest state of Sonora between police and around 50 armed men traveling in a dozen or so vehicles, a spokesman at the state attorney’s office told AFP.
‘A total of 15 assassins are dead. During the clashes the body of a kidnapped policeman was found, in addition to four city police from Cananea who were killed’ earlier in the morning, Jose Larrinaga said.
‘We also found the bodies of two civilians who had also been kidnapd in the morning,’ he said, adding that four other people were set free after being kidnapped.
Around 900 people have been killed so far this year as Mexican authorities battle powerful drug cartels.
4 Police, 8 Gunmen Killed in Northern Mexican
Oman Nevarez - Associated Press
Hermosillo, Mexico – Armed men abducted and killed four Mexican policemen on Wednesday about 20 miles south of the Arizona border, and police later killed eight of the gunmen after tracking them into the hills with a helicopter.
During a gunbattle with 40 armed assailants – which continued for hours in the mountains south of Cananea, Sonora near the U.S. border – state police were able to free four other people abducted by the gang, including one police officer and three Cananea residents, said state prosecutors' spokesman Jose Larrinaga.
The assailants drove into Cananea in 10 to 15 vehicles and seized four policemen in two patrol cars, the Sonora state police said in a news release.
The bullet-riddled bodies of the four, along with 50 spent cartridges, were found on the side of a road hours later, the statement said. It was not clear where the other officer was abducted.
The gunmen then fled and tried to hole up in mountainous terrain around the town of Arizpe, about 50 miles south of Cananea.
Police followed them there, defeated part of the contingent and seized 15 high-powered rifles following a shootout that left eight assailants dead, Larrinaga said.
Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours declined to speculate on a motive for the killings, but Mexico has seen a wave of attacks on police, military and intelligence officials as the government battles drug trafficking gangs.
Meanwhile, in Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state, unidentified assailants on Wednesday tossed a hand grenade from a passing car at the offices of the newspaper Cambio. The device caused only minor damage and no injuries. A similar attack on the newspaper occurred in April.
And authorities in the northern state of Coahuila reported that men disguised as Mexican federal agents had kidnapped the state's chief anti-kidnapping investigator.
Lucio Tello, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, said that Enrique Ruiz Arevalo, director-general for investigations of kidnapping and organized crime for the agency, has been missing since Monday, when he was seized as he ate breakfast in a restaurant.
Tello said the attorney general's office knew of no motive for the abduction.
President Felipe Calderón has vowed to crack down on Mexico's powerful drug cartels, sending 24,000 soldiers and police to violence-plagued states to go after everyone from cartel leaders to growers, dealers and enforcers. |
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