Global General
18 gunmen killed in attacks on Mexican army bases
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-04-01 14:02
 |
Large Medium Small |
Also on Wednesday, authorities in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco announced that the nephew of one of Mexico's most-wanted drug gang leaders was captured together with a police chief accused of protecting a notorious cartel in a key port city.
Federal police detained Roberto Rivero Arana, who identified himself as the nephew of reputed Zetas gang leader Heriberto Lazcano, the Attorney General's Office said in a statement issued late Tuesday.
He was arrest along with Daniel Perez, the acting police chief of Ciudad del Carmen, an oil hub in neighboring Campeche state. The statement alleged Perez received 200,000 pesos ($16,000) a month for protecting the Zetas.
The arrests come as the Zetas are under pressure from a bloody turf war with their former ally, the Gulf cartel. Authorities blame that fight for contributing to a surge of violence in Mexico's northeastern border states north of Tabasco and Campeche.
Perez was acting chief pending a permanent appointment, Ciudad del Carmen Mayor Aracely Escalante said Wednesday.
"He's an agent who had been with the police force long before we took over the town government," Escalante said. "We had given him our trust."
The two men were found with 10 assault rifles, a grenade, ammunition, drugs, police uniforms and worker suits with the logo of Mexico's state oil company, Pemex, the Attorney General's Office said.
Last week, Tabasco Gov. Andres Granier warned that the arrests of several suspected Zetas over the past several months could stoke turf battles in his region. He asked the federal government to send troops.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government announced that federal police will take over the anti-crime campaign currently headed by the army in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez.
The army deployment has come under criticism from those who say soldiers are not trained for police work, and complaints they conducted illegal searches and detentions. But perhaps more important is the fact that killings have continued apace, even with troops in the city across the border from El Paso, Texas.
An unspecified number of soldiers will remain in Juarez to help combat drug gang violence that killed more than 2,600 people last year, and 500 more so far this year in the city of 1.3 million.
Starting Thursday, "the Mexican army will start gradually transferring responsibility for public safety to civilian authorities, to federal authorities at the beginning and gradually to state and local" forces, the Interior Department said in a news release.
The statement said 1,000 federal officers will be added to the police deployment in the city, bringing the number of federal agents to 4,500.
More than 7,000 troops had arrived in Juarez by mid-2009.
The department said the change was part of a new strategy to focus on social programs as an answer to the continuing violence.
Elsewhere, four severed human heads were found early Wednesday in Apatzingan, a town in the western state of Michoacan. Residents found the heads, with eyes still blindfolded, lined up at the foot of a monument along with a threatening message, state prosecutors said.
In Morelia, the Michoacan state capital, police reported finding the bodies of three young men who had been shot to death. The bodies had messages stuck to their chests with knives, The contents of the messages were not released.
Police in the border city of Nogales reported finding the bullet-ridden bodies of three men, including a city transport official, on a rural road along with three burned-out vehicles.
Wednesday marked the beginning of Mexico's Easter Week vacation, and police in the Pacific coast state of Guerrero reported that gunmen had held up two motorists on the highway leading to the resort of Acapulco. The gunmen stole the victims' vehicles, but they were not injured.
