Thread: Breaking News! Just accross the border 4 police killed

THIS IS ONLY 20-30 MILES FROM THE US BORDER FOLKS!

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- Twenty-two people, including five police officers, were killed in a gunfight in northern Mexico in the bloodiest clash of a five-month-old government offensive against drug gangs.

Shooting broke out when state police backed by helicopters and soldiers swooped down on a ranch in Sonora state, just south of Arizona, where drug hitmen who had abducted 11 people were hiding, Mexican newspapers said Thursday.

The police and army killed 15 members of the drugs gang in Wednesday's five-hour clash. Five policemen died and the cartel hitmen also killed two civilians, the newspapers said.

Mexico President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to fight drug gangs in mostly northern and western states since he took office in December.

More than 900 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico this year, most of them in turf battles between the Gulf Cartel from northeastern Mexico and an alliance of traffickers headed by kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Originally Posted by mapwife

THIS IS ONLY 20-30 MILES FROM THE US BORDER FOLKS!

It shouldn't surprise anyone when the same thing happens on this side of the border. It's coming sooner rather than later.

Published: 05.18.2007

Sonora mourns dead police
Four arrested a day after 22 including 5 cops were killed
By Ignacio Ibarra and Lourdes Medrano
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
CANANEA, Sonora — Police and Mexican army troops arrested four men Thursday that they say were part of a roving band of bandits who wreaked havoc across this border area, setting off shootouts with police that left at least 22 people dead and decimated the local police force.
"Helicopters are combing the whole area" looking for the remnants of the estimated 50 gunmen who assaulted the town of Cananea, 30 miles south of the U.S. border, said Luis Pena Molina, the town secretary of Banamichi. He said four gunmen had been detained.
In Cananea on Thursday, the family of one of the five slain city police officers gathered at a funeral parlor guarded by Mexican law enforcement while other officers continued to chase down the scattered remnants of the heavily armed gunmen who overran the area overnight Wednesday in a wave of violence linked to drug cartels.
The gunmen, estimated as a gang of up to 70 people dressed as Mexican police and soldiers, reportedly conducted roadblocks to steal money and cell phones from motorists, and kidnapped seven officers and four civilians before engaging in a rolling gunbattle with police and army units in the mountains near the town of Arizpe, about 130 miles south of Tucson.
The death toll included five Cananea police officers, two civilians and at least 15 of the gunmen, according to Sonora officials.
The invasion of Cananea — a town that helped spark the 1910 Mexican Revolution when U.S. forces crossed the border to help put down a miners' strike — showed the brashness and power of Mexico's ruthless organized-crime gangs.
The first outside authorities to arrive in Cananea on Wednesday found an eerie no man's land where local law enforcement had melted away.
By the end of the day Thursday, 20 of the town's 52 police officers had resigned, said Cananea Police Chief Gabriel Hurtado.
He said he and his officers were devastated by the violence and angered at the comments attributed to Sonora state Gov. Eduardo Bours suggesting Hurtado's officers were killed because they were involved with criminal activity.
"Of course this affects us. The people here, the families, they're very upset by what was said. Some of the officers killed had only been with us a couple months," he said. "I expect there will be a full investigation. I welcome it."
Bours noted the lack of local law enforcement earlier in the day.
"When the state police arrived, there was not a single municipal police officer," Bours said. "We had to take over the command. There wasn't anyone there. They had all left."
Bours added that he had previously asked for a federal investigation of the Cananea police force, apparently to determine whether it was infiltrated by Mexico's Pacific Coast drug gangs.
Federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna blamed a turf battle between the Gulf and Pacific drug gangs.
"An armed command first abducted a police patrol, then went out on the streets of Cananea … abducting policemen," Garcia Luna told reporters. "It is a group linked to the Gulf cartel, waging a turf battle with the Pacific people, for control of this territory."
Outside the Cananea police chief's office, Guillermo Gonzalez Valenzuela was more concerned with coping with the devastating violence that left his police officer son Rogelio Gonzalez Orozco dead than why it happened.
"Bosses can say what they want, but there is a reality here. They were working, doing their jobs. That's what we know."
Gonzalez said his 25-year-old son had been a Cananea police officer for three years. He left behind a wife and two young children.
Hurtado said the first two of his officers to confront the heavily armed convoy of 20 vehicles and about 70 men thought they had come upon a military and police operation when they encountered the caravan on the highway west of town. The men were dressed in military fatigues and uniforms like those worn by federal and state police.
The two officers were disarmed and brutally beaten by members of the group. Their patrol vehicle — a pickup truck — was rolled down a steep canyon.
During the beating, the officers said one of the attackers said they belonged to the Gulf cartel, a drug-trafficking organization based in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua. Police say the cartel may be in a turf war with a Tijuana-based organization.
Hurtado said the officers were told their fight wasn't with local police, "but if you get involved, we'll send you to hell."
The two officers notified their colleagues in Cananea about the attack. The five Cananea officers on duty loaded into the two police units available and went to the aid of their comrades, encountering the caravan just outside town.
The bodies of four officers were found a few hours later on the road to Arizpe. The fifth officer's body was found later at the site of the initial gunbattle.
Through the day Thursday local police and townspeople heard rumors that a running gunbattle was continuing as police continued to comb the mountains for signs of the fleeing assailants.
Sonora Attorney General Abel Murrieta Gutiérrez, who took an aerial tour of the area, confirmed that. He said about 100 federal officers were assisting.
Police had secured 13 vehicles and more than 100 weapons as well as communications equipment, Murrieta Gutiérrez said. The dead gunmen have yet to be identified, he said.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/183661

Lorraine Rivera Reports
Naco on high alert, port of entry reopen

May 18, 2007 06:14 PM MST

The border town of Naco is on heightened alert after fierce gun battles in Mexico.

The violence started Wednesday after dozens of armed gunmen raided a police armory and kidnapped and killed several officers.

Friday, Mexican port officials in Naco were not allowing cars to enter Mexico. The people trapped in Naco left their vehicles behind and walked across. Early in the evening, Mexican officials began to let vehicles pass.

Rumors started to spread that this week's drug cartel violence may spill across the international line. That led the Naco school district to place the only school in town, a K-8, on lockdown. Students and teachers were not allowed to leave their classrooms. News 4 has learned, word got out about the lockdown, and a majority of parents came by to pick up their students.

Local authorities were in the area on a heightened security of alert, including reports of ICE activity.

The Cochise County Sheriff's Department remains on a heightened alert, prepared should any sort of violence spill into the U.S.

The violence is being linked to drug cartels.
http://kvoa.com/global/story.asp?s=6538 ... =Printable

May 18, 2007, 7:13PM
Body found in wake of attack by cartels

By OMAN NEVAREZ Associated Press Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

ARIZPE, Mexico — Police and Mexican army troops found a body in the search Friday for members of a drug cartel assault force that overran a town near the Arizona border and killed seven people, including five police officers.

Wednesday's invasion of Cananea, about 30 miles south of the U.S. border, by a heavily armed caravan showed the brashness and power of Mexico's ruthless organized crime gangs.

After the attack on Cananea, about 50 assailants fled to the hills pursued by police and army troops. The ensuing gunbattles in the rugged desert mountains outside the nearby town of Arizpe left 16 gunmen dead, including the one whose body was found Friday.

Authorities say they have arrested four suspects.

Mexico is struggling to tame drug gangs responsible for a recent spate of executions, and has sent thousands of police and army troops to several states.

Mexican Federal Public Safety Secretary Genaro Garcia said Thursday that drug gangs are relying on a flow of arms from the United States, including assault rifles, machine guns and hand grenades.

Meanwhile, the leader of a state investigative police team, Pedro Emigdio Cordova, was shot and died Friday in Hermosillo, the Sonora state capital about 200 miles south of Cananea.

Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said their was no information connecting the killing with the violence in Cananea and Arizpe. (??????)

Hours later, gunmen also killed the chief of criminal investigations in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, Raul Lopez Lopez.

News of more police killings weighed on officers searching the desert for the Cananea assailants.

"We don't know what's going to happen next, what reprisals can happen," said an officer, who asked his name not be published out of safety concerns.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/ ... 17637.html