29 Arrests made in violent northeastern state, Mexican gov't says:

Published April 18, 2011/ EFE

Mexico City – A total of 29 suspects have been arrested in operations targeting drug traffickers in Tamaulipas, a border state in northeastern Mexico plagued by a wave of drug-related violence, officials said.

The most important arrest was that of Omar Martin Estrada Luna, suspected of being the Zetas cartel's boss in San Fernando, where he was allegedly behind the killings of more than 200 people.

Estrada Luna is accused of being the "intellectual and material" author of numerous crimes committed in recent months, including the massacre of 72 migrants last summer at a ranch near San Fernando and the killings of 145 people whose bodies were found in mass graves this month.

Navy spokesman Adm. Luis Vergara paraded Estrada Luna and 11 other suspects before the press on Sunday, but he refused to take questions from reporters because they might "endanger the success of the mission" being carried out by federal security forces in San Fernando.

Estrada Luna is considered the "suspect responsible for the execution of the 72 undocumented migrants found in August of last year in the city of San Fernando, Tamaulipas," Vergara said.

The Zetas boss has also been "linked to the deaths of Roberto Jaime Suarez, an agent of the prosecutor's office in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and Juan Carlos Sanchez Suarez, police chief of the same city, as well as extortion, kidnappings and trafficking of arms and drugs," Vergara said.

The navy spokesman did not provide any details about the evidence gathered against Estrada Luna.

The presence of navy forces in Tamaulipas has increased since the discovery earlier this month of the mass graves outside San Fernando, Vergara said.

Navy personnel are carrying out "tactical-operational intelligence operations" and "exchanging information with domestic and foreign agencies," the admiral said.

A total of 29 suspected Zetas cartel members have now been arrested, along with 16 municipal police officers accused of protecting the criminals.

San Fernando is a city that links Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas, to the border cities of Matamoros and Reynosa.

The bodies found in the mass graves are believed to be those of people who were kidnapped by Los Zetas while traveling through San Fernando and were later murdered.

The Attorney General's Office is offering rewards of up to 15 million pesos ($1.26 million) for information leading to the arrests of all those involved in the killings.

Officials are trying to identify the victims, one of whom was confirmed to be a Guatemalan migrant.

The discovery of the mass graves has rocked Mexico, where more than 36,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006.

The mass graves were discovered earlier this month in the wake of reports that gunmen had forced men off buses headed for Reynosa, located across the border from McAllen, Texas, between March 19 and March 31.

Some gangs have resorted to using unusual methods to recruit gunmen because of the high casualties in the war being waged by rival drug traffickers for control of territory, the federal government says.

The incidents involving the buses may have been an attempt to recruit gunmen, investigators said.

Hundreds of people have gone to morgues looking for missing relatives and friends who might be among the victims.

Los Zetas, considered Mexico's most violent drug cartel, has been blamed for the wave of violence in Tamaulipas and other parts of northern Mexico.

The mass graves found recently are in La Joya, a rural community outside San Fernando, near where the migrants' bodies were discovered last summer.

A total of 15,270 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico last year.

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