11 bodies found inside abandoned car in Mexico
Get Adobe Flash player
A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrols in a vehicle the U.S.-Mexico border
fence in Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, June 4, 2009. Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Thursday grants of about $59 million
for local law enforcement efforts to combat crime along the U.S.-Mexico
border.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent patrols in a vehicle the U.S.-Mexico border
fence in Tijuana, Mexico, Thursday, June 4, 2009. Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Thursday grants of about $59 million
for local law enforcement efforts to combat crime along the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Guillermo Arias / AP Photo
* Photo
By OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press Writer
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican police found 11 bodies - most with their hands and
feet cut off - inside an abandoned car in the border state of Sonora
Thursday in violence attributed to drug traffickers battling for control of
the region.
Sonora's state prosecutors said in a statement that the bodies were
discovered inside a sport utility vehicle on a road between the towns of
Caborca and Sonoyta along with a threatening message. The SUV had been
stolen in Arizona.
Prosecutors did not reveal what the message said or the identities of the
bodies. They said the killings are linked to a fight between local drug
traffickers and another group trying to move in.
Police are investigating whether the killings are tied to an attack on the
village of Plutarco Elias Calles where four people were abducted and
assailants opened fire on the police station Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, federal police said Thursday they have captured two of 53
inmates who escaped from a prison in northern Mexico last month as its
guards apparently stood by.
Marcos Espinoza and Osvaldo Garcia were detained Wednesday in Mexico's
central state of Hidalgo along with six alleged members of the Zetas, a
gang of hit men tied to the Gulf cartel, federal police intelligence
coordinator Luis Cardenas told reporters.
Security camera footage shows that guards at the Cieneguillas prison in
Zacatecas state stood by as an armed gang walked out with the 53 inmates on
May 16. About a dozen of the fugitives are drug cartel suspects.
The prison director and all 44 guards on duty have been jailed pending an
investigation into their possible complicity.
Mexican drug gangs often buy off or blackmail guards and police.
In Michoacan, a state police officer was killed and another one arrested
after a clash with soldiers, the army said.
The Defense Department said in a statement that soldiers were checking a
kidnapping report in the town of Tarimbaro when assailants opened fire. It
said a female state police who was on a leave of absence was shot to death.
In neighboring Guerrero state, two state police officers were killed when
assailants fire on their patrol when they were on the highway between the
resort city of Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, state security officials said.
President Felipe Calderon's government has stepped up its campaign to fight
that kind of corruption in recent weeks, arresting dozens of police and
elected officials - including 10 mayors in his home state of Michoacan - on
suspicion of collaborating with drug traffickers.
Also Thursday, soldiers raided police stations in the northern state of
Nuevo Leon for a fourth day, detaining two police chiefs for questioning.
More than 70 officers from 13 towns have been questioned and 57 have been
detained in the effort, which began when soldiers found lists of police
names in the possession of suspected drug dealers arrested in May.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/AP/story/1082671.html
http://snipurl.com/ji4al |