Mayor shot dead in Mexico drug war flashpoint as governor vows to “punish those responsible” news

Gunmen on Thursday killed the mayor of a city in Mexico’s western state of Michoacan shaken by a lethal turf warfare between rival drug cartels, authorities mentioned. Elsewhere within the avocado-producing area, clashes between suspected gang members left a number of individuals useless, in response to prosecutors.

Aguililla Mayor Cesar Valencia was shot useless by unknown attackers whereas touring in a metropolis corridor automobile close to a soccer area within the city, army personnel who have been dispatched to the scene instructed AFP. He suffered at the very least two gunshot wounds to the chest and neck, in response to the army.

“We strongly condemn the homicide,” tweeted Alfredo Ramirez Bedolla, governor of Michoacan, the place cartels are at warfare for management of drug smuggling routes.

“I’ve issued directions to totally examine the occasions… and to punish these accountable,” he added.

Mexican mayors and different local-level politicians steadily fall sufferer to violence related to corruption and the multibillion-dollar narcotics commerce.

Aguililla is the birthplace of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, head of the highly effective Jalisco New Era Cartel. The Division of Justice considers the Jalisco cartel “one of many 5 most harmful transnational legal organizations on this planet.” 

Oseguera, 55, is among the United States’ most-wanted fugitives, with a $10 million bounty on his head.

“He’s the primary precedence for DEA and albeit for federal regulation enforcement in america,” mentioned Matthew Donahue, the DEA’s high agent in Mexico, instructed CBS Information. “He has received an infinite quantity of weapons, RPGs, 50 caliber weapons. He mainly has his personal SWAT groups.”

His hometown of round 14,000 inhabitants is among the hardest hit by Mexican legal violence, though the deployment of the army there in February introduced some calm.

Earlier than that Aguililla had lived underneath a state of close to siege as a result of blockades by cartels, which additionally left behind makeshift landmines.

Michoacan is the world’s greatest avocado-producing area and threats in opposition to a U.S. inspector working there final month prompted america to droop Mexican exports of the fruit for a few week.

Organized crime teams battle for a slice of the area’s agricultural riches by theft, kidnapping and extortion.

5 individuals have been killed on Thursday in clashes between two armed teams in Michoacan, one in all which seized a mayor’s workplace within the village of Nuevo Parangaricutiro, prosecutors mentioned.

Safety forces later regained management of the constructing, detained 32 suspects and seized round 40 weapons, together with assault rifles, a machine gun and explosives, the Michoacan state prosecutor’s workplace mentioned.

Mexico has recorded greater than 340,000 murders since launching a controversial anti-drug army operation in 2006, most of them blamed on combating between criminals, in response to official figures.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed 9 individuals in an assault linked to medication on a home in central Mexico. The “execution” of six males and three girls on Tuesday evening shook a middle-class space of the often peaceable city of Atlixco, mentioned Puebla state governor Miguel Barbosa.