Bloody Battle in Mexican Border Town
An hours-long gun battle in the Mexican border town of Matamoros left at least eight people dead, including the leader of a major drug gang and a newspaper reporter. Pictured above, a government spokesman speaking about the violence.
An hours-long gun battle in the Mexican border town of Matamoros left at least eight people dead, including the leader of a major drug gang and a newspaper reporter.
The battle among two drug cartels, police and the Mexican navy closed down the city for the better part of Friday, including all three bridges that connect Matamoros to Brownsville, Texas.
The journalist who was killed was Carlos Alberto Guajardo. Sources with knowledge of his death claim he was killed by soldiers who were chasing the drug traffickers.
For a local view of the story, check out the Brownsville Herald’s coverage of the gunfight. –JCL
Wait, before you go…The New York Times:
The Mexican authorities said Friday that a leader of the Gulf drug gang had been killed in Matamoros during a day marked by street fighting between soldiers and gunmen that paralyzed the city, which is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex.
The gang leader, Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén, who American and Mexican officials say took control of the cartel after his brother Osiel Cárdenas Guillén was arrested in 2003, was killed by Mexican marines, according to a statement by Alejandro Poiré, the security spokesman for the government.
Three other gang members were also killed, the statement said, and the Mexican Navy reported that two marines and a soldier died during the six-hour gun battle.
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Americas
Narco-messages are fairly common, and just as often, not sincere.
But Friday's massive battle in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, was shocking for the government's open capitulation to the brazen gunmen.
So deeply has this incident shaken the country that, as author Ruben Martinez describes it, “To understand the historical significance -- and the moral and political gravity -- of what is occurring, think of 9/11, of Sandy Hook, of the day JFK was assassinated.”
Agents from the FBI and ICE swept through downtown L.A.’s fashion district on Wednesday, grabbing $65 million that allegedly belongs to Mexican drug traffickers.
After a 17-month investigation led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, federal, state and local authorities cracked down on a vast drug-smuggling network in Arizona that officials tied to Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, making 76 arrests in three separate raids.
For the future of unchecked global capitalism, look to the savagery of the drug war in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, says The Guardian's Ed Vulliamy. (more)
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