Friday 12 July 2013

Mexican troops shoot "13 gunmen," Government counts 7,100 killed since December

Soldiers fought a gun battle with suspected members of one of the drug cartels in Sombrerete, a town in the north-central state of Zacatecas on 11 July, killing 13 suspects and confiscating weaponry and items including mobile phones, media reported, citing comments by the chief prosecutor of Zacatecas. Arturo Nahle García wrote on the website Twitter that the battle occurred during a routine patrol in Sombrerete, while witnesses were cited as saying that shooting began when army vehicles unexpectedly coincided with several cars said being driven by the gunmen, Proceso reported on 11 July. The same review reported on 6 July a shootout between police and suspected criminals in the northern city of Monclova, wherein the policemen killed three gunmen described as aged between 20 and 25 years. The suspects reportedly began to shoot at police from a convoy of cars, using rifles or assault weapons. Two or more gunmen were separately said to have shot dead four individuals in a house in Tlanepantla in Estado de México, the state outside the capital, late on 8 July. Police speculated this was a "possible" settling of accounts among local drug dealers, Proceso reported on 9 July. Mexico's interior ministry (Gobernación), put at 7,128 the number of those killed in incidents thought related to drugs and cartels between 1 December 2012 and 30 June 2013, Proceso reported on 11 July. The period constituted the first seven months of the government led by President Enrique Peña Nieto. The dead included 869 reported killed in June, of whom 830 were qualified as presumed or suspected criminals, 31 "public servants" and eight said to have been unrelated to the incidents that provoked their deaths. The ministry stated that 1,096 individuals were arrested in June and being investigated for suspected involvement in federal offences.