16 militants killed in clashes in Mexico, three police officers wounded in car bomb as cartel violence escalates

Multiple clashes Thursday between Mexican security forces and suspected gunmen killed at least 16 people in the violence-plagued southern state of Guerrero, the military said, the same day a car bomb left outside a police station in western Mexico wounded three officers.

The first skirmish took place in the city of Tecpan de Galeana, near the Pacific coast, where two were killed and four others were wounded.

Security forces later engaged a criminal gang that attacked a military base in the same area, killing 14 militants, according to a police statement. Secretariat of National Defense SEDENA.

Guerrero, one of Mexico’s poorest states, has endured years of violence associated with turf wars between cartels vying for control of drug production and trafficking.

The state, home to the coastal resort city of Acapulco, a former playground of the rich and famous, recorded 1,890 murders last year and has now been plagued by crime.

In early October, the mayor of the state capital of Guerrero was assassinated less than a week after taking office. his beheading caused outrage throughout the country and demands for greater protection.

Further north, in Guanajuato state on Thursday, a car bomb exploded near a police station, injuring three officers, local authorities said.

The explosion damaged a police station, four houses and several homes, but only injured police officers, the department said.

Officials said another explosion, apparently a second car bomb, occurred in the nearby town of Jerecuaro. Although no one was injured, the force of the second explosion was enough to blow off the building’s tile roof, blacken the facades of surrounding stores and set a police cruiser’s pickup truck on fire.

Near-simultaneous attacks in two different cities about half an hour’s drive from each other suggest the involvement of drug cartels that have been waging bloody turf battles in Guanajuato for years.

The central region is a thriving industrial center and home to several popular tourist destinations, but it is also now considered Mexico’s most violent state.

On October 4, the bodies of 12 murdered police officers were found in different areas of Salamanca, a city in Guanajuato.

Cartel wars continue

Officials say the violence in the state stems from a conflict between the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco New Generation Cartelone of the most powerful in all of Mexico.

“I want to be very decisive: our priority is the pacification of Guanajuato, and together we will achieve this difficult task,” Governor Garcia of Libya. said on social networks after Thursday’s attack.

She said an air and ground operation had been launched involving state security forces to support municipal police.

Since the government began using the army to fight the cartels in 2006, there have been more than 450,000 drug-related murders in Mexico.

President Claudia Sheinbaumwho took office on October 1, has vowed to continue her predecessor’s “hugs, not bullets” strategy of using social policy to tackle root crime, as well as making better use of intelligence.

“The war on drugs is not coming back,” she said, referring to the US-backed offensive launched in 2006.

The northwestern stronghold of the Sinaloa cartel has also seen a spike in violence since the July arrest of a drug lord. Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada in the United States. Last month he pleaded not guilty in a US drug trafficking case in which he is accused of participating in a murder plot and ordering torture.

Mexican soldiers were shot and killed on Monday 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa cartel after being attacked.

Capture of Zambada provoked strife between his supporters and militants loyal to jailed cartel founder Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and his sons.

Zambada is accused Joaquin Guzman Lopez– one of El Chapo’s sons, who led a faction of the cartel known as “Chapitos”, – in his abduction and transfer to US law enforcement agencies.

According to an indictment unsealed by the US Department of Justice last year, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electric shocks and hot chili peppers to torment your rivals while some of their victims were “fed to the tigers, dead or alive.” El Chapo’s sons were among 28 Sinaloa Cartel members indicted in a major investigation into fentanyl trafficking announced in April 2023.

El Chapo is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after his convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related crimes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.