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Heavily armed soldiers enter the area where more than a dozen law enforcement officers have been killed after their convoy was ambushed by suspected drug traffickers, prompting a massive hunt by police, soldiers, Marines and the National Guard on Thursday. from Coatepec Harinas, Mexico, Thursday, March 18, 2021.
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MEXICO CITY – Armed forces apparently from a drug gang ambushed a police convoy in central Mexico on Thursday. killing eight state police officers and five prosecutors in a hail of gunfire, authorities said.
The massacre of 13 law enforcement officers in Mexico was the largest killing of law enforcement in the country in October 2019, when the cartel’s armed men ambushed and killed 14 state police officers in neighboring Michoacan.
Thursday’s ambush triggered a huge search for the killers in a gang-ridden rural area southwest of Mexico City, which is surrounded on three sides by Mexico. The dead policemen worked for the state.
While the state of Mexico contains the suburbs of the capital, it also includes land without mountains and leaves, such as the one where the attack took place.
Rodrigo Martínez Celis, head of the state’s Public Security Department, said soldiers, Marines and National Guard troops were combing the area on land and in the air in search of the killers.
“The convoy was conducting patrols in the region, precisely to fight against criminal groups operating in the area,” said Martínez Celis. “This aggression is an attack on the Mexican government.
“We will respond with all our might,” he added.
There were no immediate indications as to which gang or cartel the armed men may have belonged to. Several are operating in the area around Coatepec Harinas, where the attack took place.
The city is next to a hot spring resort known as Ixtapan de la Sal, which is popular with Mexico residents as a weekend getaway. But it is also relatively close to cities like Taxco, where authorities have reported activities of the Guerreros Unidos gang apparently allied with the Jalisco cartel and the Arcelia gang, dominated by the criminal organization Familia Michoacán.
The attack appears to be a challenge for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has pursued a strategy of not directly confronting drug cartels in an effort to avoid violence.