Seven Die in Clash Between Gunmen, Security Forces in Northern Mexico

At least seven people died in a gun battle pitting soldiers and federal police against suspected drug cartel enforcers in the northern Mexican state of San Luis Potosi, officials said. The clash occurred on a stretch of the Mexico City-Nuevo Laredo highway and left five suspected mobsters and one federal police officer dead. Four other officers were wounded, while a person held captive by the gunmen apparently had been shot and killed before the gun battle.

Elsewhere, two police investigators were killed Friday and another was seriously wounded when they came under attack by several men riding in a vehicle in the northern city of Chihuahua, capital of the like-named northern state. State police officers were inspecting a vehicle with bloodstains when the gunmen arrived and fired numerous rounds, the spokesman for the Chihuahua state Attorney General’s Office, Carlos Gonzalez, said.

The slain police were identified as Jesus Manuel Torres Gallegos and Elias Mendez Lozano and the wounded officer as Aaron Ramos Perez. Meanwhile, army soldiers captured four suspected members of the La Familia Michoacana drug cartel in the southern Mexican state of Michoacan following a gun battle in the town of Zamora. Military officials said the alleged hit men fired from two vehicles at a military convoy.

The soldiers repelled the aggression, wounding two of the assailants and subduing the entire group, from whom four high-caliber rifles, two handguns, 37 ammunition clips, 350 rounds of ammunition and three fragmentation grenades were seized. A former police officer in the town of Jacona identified as Salvador Sanchez Benitez was among the detainees.

In Morelia, Michoacan’s capital, federal police officers confiscated nine luxury vehicles that had been reported stolen and were found at a small hotel in the city’s Chapultepec Sur neighborhood. According to sources close to the investigation, the automobiles may have been stolen and used by La Familia Michoacana, a violent, quasi-religious crime syndicate that controls drug-trafficking in that state.

Mexico is home to seven large drug cartels that are embroiled in fierce turf battles for control of local markets and smuggling routes to the United States, including the powerful Sinaloa mob headed by Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive. The gangs also frequently clash with security forces that try to crack down on their operations. The drug war has left more than 34,000 dead since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office and militarized the struggle against the cartels.