http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/miami/16614.html

Farmers fire at cops, 18 arrested


El Universal
January 15, 2006

Eighteen farmers were arrested on Saturday after they opened fire on police on a cooperative farm in the southern state of Oaxaca, authorities said.

State police arrested the 18 males, whose ages ranged from 16 to 79, following a dawn shootout in the village of Acatlán de Pérez Figueroa, police chief Manuel Moreno said.

There were no reports of injuries in the shootout that came after police attempted to serve arrest warrants on four members of the "Emiliano Zapata" cooperative farm for unspecified crimes.

The group was initially charged with carrying unlicensed weapons. They were arrested with 13 shotguns, two rifles and a pistol, Moreno said.

Moreno denied the shootings and arrest warrants had anything to do with a rash of drug-related killings across southern Mexico in recent days. The mayor of the Oaxacan town of Ixtepec was killed in Veracruz state on Friday.