Thread: Officials: Zetas go on rampage in Miguel Aleman

The Monitor

Officials: Zetas go on rampage in Miguel Aleman

A convoy of armed gunmen allegedly belonging to the Zetas attacked the city Thursday shooting at, vandalizing and torching the headquarters of the Tamaulipas State Police, the local transit police headquarters and nearly a dozen buildings in Miguel Alemán, authorities said. The attack left one civilian and several gunmen dead.

Miguel Alemán is across the Rio Grande from Roma.

According to the information released by the Mexican Army, a firefight with gunmen resulted in the death of one gunmen and the arrest of 11 more. They also reported one soldier dead.

Also on Thursday, the body count found in mass graves in rural San Fernando rose to 177. The Zetas are accused of killing those bodies and placing them several mass graves, the most recent of which was discovered Tuesday.

The attack began about 5:15 a.m. Thursday and continued until 7:30 a.m., when the Mexican military was able to run the gunmen out of town, said a law enforcement official who asked not to be named for security reasons.

The Mexican Military issued a news release that doesn’t mention the dead civilian or the other gunmen reported by the law enforcement official.

One of the groups stayed in Miguel Alemán and fought with the military while the other went toward Ciudad Mier. As a result of the firefight, the Mexican army reported seizing 20 assault rifles, eight grenades, more than 300 magazines and more than 7,600 ammunition rounds.

According to the 8th Military Zone in Reynosa, the Zetas also attacked a military patrol along the Riberena highway prior to the attack in Miguel Aleman which prompted the mobilization of army troops toward the area.

Also prior to the arrival of the military, when Zetas arrived in town, they began shooting at the law enforcement headquarters and shot at the buildings and patrol cars as well as causing other damage, the Mexican law enforcement official stated.

The group then went around town shooting at and setting fire to a number of high-profile buildings along the city’s main avenue, including the Ford and Nissan dealerships, an AutoZone store, a convenience store, a large furniture store and a used car lot.

During the rampage, one employee of the local Coca-Cola Co. bottling plant was killed as he drove to work. His name was not released pending notification of next of kin, the law enforcement official said. When military forces arrived toward the end of the rampage, a shootout ensued.

In the San Fernando case, Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office announced the arrest of another San Fernando municipal police officer who is described as being part of the group of police officers who provided protection to the Zetas during the time that the massacres took place. Officer Joel Reséndiz Moreno was presented Thursday afternoon by the PGR as the agemcu asked for the public’s help in coming forward and filing charges against him in connection with the case. He is the 17th officer to be arrested in connection with the case.

The Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office—PGJE, said Thursday that the first mass graves were discovered April 1, and authorities have continued to find more since. The most recent grave site was found Tuesday when authorities found three graves with six additional bodies.

Of the 177 bodies, 122 can be related to the investigation into a string of hijacked buses last month, according to a PGJE news release.

The other 55 bodies have been buried for a longer time and are not related to the investigation, the PGJE said.

The agency also said that as of Wednesday 345 individuals have appeared to look for missing relatives, 237 of those have filed complaints into the disappearance of a loved one and 280 have provided with DNA samples for investigation purposes.

Source: http://www.themonitor.com/news/aleman-4 ... zetas.html

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Border towns hit by cartel gunmen
Roma fearful as sister city in Mexico attacked
By JASON BUCH
SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
April 22, 2011, 11:36PM


Cartel gunmen attacked the Mexican border towns of Miguel Alemán and Ciudad Mier on Thursday, torching buildings and disrupting a city that has been a haven for those fleeing cartel violence.

Gunmen from the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, the Gulf's one-time enforcement arm that has been fighting a bloody war with its former masters since early last year, clashed in Miguel Alemán and Mier early Thursday, the Mexican military said in a news release.

Gunshots could be heard on a video taken by a National Guardsman in the early morning hours Thursday near Roma, across the border from Miguel Alemán. In another video, taken just after sunrise, plumes of smoke can be seen rising over the city of about 27,000.

One soldier was killed along with a cartel gunman, and 11 suspects were arrested, including one woman and a wounded man, the military said. In Miguel Alemán, businesses were attacked, the military said. A picture on the website El Blog del Narco showed auto dealerships and other buildings either burning or damaged by fire.

A message posted on the blog, purported to be from the Gulf Cartel, blamed the fighting on soldiers from Zeta-held Nuevo Laredo trying to open up the highway to Miguel Alemán for the Zetas.

The attack in Miguel Alemán was disheartening to residents in Roma, on the Texas side of the border. Roma's sister city has been largely spared the violence that's wracked most of the state of Tamaulipas that borders Texas from Laredo to the coast.

Miguel Alemán has been a refuge for residents of smaller rural communities like Mier, which late last year was overrun by Zeta gunmen. Other towns like Camargo, across from Rio Grande City, and Guerrero Viejo, on the Mexican side of Falcon Lake where a U.S. citizen was shot and killed last year, are mostly ghost towns, said Noe Benavides, a Roma businessman and former city councilman.

"Miguel Alemán is actually the only community that there's movement going on, that there's business that's active," Benavides said.

Cross border commerce has all but dried up since the Zetas and Gulf started warring last year, said Roma Mayor Freddy Guerra, and those living on the U.S. side are afraid to visit relatives in the communities across the river.

There hasn't been any so-called spillover violence in Roma — there's only been one homicide so far this year in the city of 10,000 and it was the result of domestic violence - but trafficking is still a problem, Guerra said.

Express-News Staff writer Lynn Brezosky contributed to this report from Brownsville.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chr ... 33932.html

Mexico's Drug Violence Is Spiraling Out Of Control Along The Northeast Border

Grace Wyler
Apr. 25, 2011, 12:09 PM


Cartel gunmen have been attacking Mexican border towns once thought to be safe from the country's rampant drug violence, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The cities of Miguel Alemán, across the border from Roma, Texas, and Ciudad Mier came under siege last Thursday. Authorities believe the attacks are part of a turf battle between the powerful Gulf and Los Zetas cartels, which are at war over lucrative smuggling routes in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

Miguel Alemán, a city of 27,000, has been a refuge for Mexican citizens fleeing drug violence in other border cities. It's one of the only towns in Tamaulipas where business continued to thrive during President Felipe Calderon's war against the drug cartels.

Residents of Ciudad Mier, on the other hand, say their town has been a brewing cartel battleground for the past year, although the violence has not been reported by Mexican officials. The town, which has no municipal police, was overtaken by the Zetas when they split from the Gulf Cartel, their former bosses, in early 2010. Residents believe the Mexican military is leaving Ciudad Mier alone in order to let the Gulf Cartel destroy Los Zetas, an assessment that echoes comments made by U.S. officials in secret diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks.

The weekend violence came as Mexican authorities continue to dig up bodies from mass graves in Tamaulipas and Durango states and as a series of gangland incidents ravaged the northern border state of Nuevo León.

In light of the spreading violence, the U.S. State Department has expanded its travel warning for Mexico. The new warning includes several areas previously considered to be relatively safe, such as Baja California, Nogales, a border city near Tucson, Ariz., and Rocky Point, a popular resort town on the Gulf of California. It also warns business people and travelers of violence in Acapulco and Monterrey.

Officials in Mexico's Baja California state have protested the warning, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, saying that they have made inroads against the cartels and parts of the peninsula remain relatively untouched by drug violence.

The AP reports, however, that a man was found shot to death Saturday in the lobby of a luxury hotel in Cabo San Lucas, a popular tourist destination where violence has been extremely rare. Also on Saturday, residents found the dismembered body of a woman scattered in an upscale Mexico City neighborhood. The two incidents are further indication that no part of Mexico is immune to the drug violence.

http://www.businessinsider.com/mexicos- ... z1Kb1XSOGx