Posted on 05/17/2011 12:13:22 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Guatemala City – Police killed two suspected members of Mexico's Los Zetas drug cartel and arrested a third near the ranch in northern Guatemala where nearly 30 people were massacred over the weekend, a National Civilian Police, or PNC, spokesman said.
"There are two suspected criminals dead and one more captured alive, as well as an officer wounded," a PNC spokesman in the northern province of Peten said.
The three men are suspected of belonging to the "Zeta 200" cell of Los Zetas, considered Mexico's most violent drug cartel, police said.
The gunfight with police and the arrest occurred in Santa Elena, a city near the Los Cocos ranch, where Zetas gunmen massacred 27 farmworkers, of whom 26 were beheaded, on Sunday.
Investigators have identified 15 of the 27 victims, of whom three were ages 17, 15 and 13.
Armed men riding a motorcycle threw three grenades Monday morning at PNC officers and army troops in Santa Elena, wounding a police officer.
Army troops and police are monitoring eight border crossings in an effort to prevent the Zetas gunmen from leaving Guatemala, President Alvaro Colom said in a press conference a few kilometers from where the shootout occurred.
The president called the massacre an act of "barbarism" and vowed that those responsible would be captured.
About 30 to 40 heavily armed men arrived in Los Cocos looking for the ranch's owner, Otto Salguero, and attacked the farmworkers when they learned he was not there, police said.
Salguero will be investigated to determine whether he has ties to drug traffickers and to find the motive for the massacre, officials said.
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