Mexican gunmen kill security forces in escalation of drug war

Gunmen have conducted almost simultaneous attacks in eight Mexican cities, killing at least five members of the security forces in a bloody escalation of the country's drugs war.

By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:10PM BST 12 Jul 2009

In one of the most brazen assaults since the President Felipe Calderón began his campaign against organised crime, men armed with grenades and automatic rifles opened fire on police stations across Michoacán state. The attackers, believed to be from the drug cartels, shot up a hotel where federal agents were staying as well as six police stations.

The assaults were understood to have been revenge for the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda, an alleged ringleader of the La Familia cartel, based in Michoacán.

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Police allege that Rueda directed the cartel's operations, while its overall leaders, Nazario Moreno Gonzalez and Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas, are on Mexico's "most wanted" list.

Minutes after Rueda was captured early on Saturday morning in Morelia, the state capital, about 40 gunmen appeared in a convoy of vehicles to try to rescue him.

They poured rifle fire and grenades into the building where he was being held. Six federal agents were wounded before officers were able to contain the attack.

The violence then spread across the beautiful Pacific coastal state. In Zitacuaro three federal agents were killed while two soldiers were shot dead in the town of Zamora, cut down by bullets from a passing car as they walked to their headquarters.

Dozens of gunmen ambushed a convoy along a highway near the port city of Lazaro Cárdenas, wounding at least five federal agents.

Many of the attacks occurred in towns whose mayors were arrested in May in a federal government campaign against politicians accused of protecting the cartels.

Mr Calderón has deployed more than 45,000 troops and federal police to deal with a vicious drugs war which has claimed at least 11,000 lives since he took office in 2006.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... g-war.html