Posted on 07/14/2008 1:46:33 AM PDT by Coffee200am
MEXICO CITY – Gunmen killed eight youths and a police chief and took dozens of restaurant patrons hostage for hours in two attacks in the drug gang-ridden state of Sinaloa, officials saidSunday.
A group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil in the early hours of Sunday, killing five young men and three female minors, a police source told Reuters.
Advertisement In an earlier attack on Saturday, six other armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall to escape security forces after they shot dead local police chief Sixto Escobedo when he resisted their attempt to kidnap him.
The attackers, dressed in police uniforms, took some 40 people hostage in a restaurant inside the mall while they negotiated their escape with police.
Drug gang killings in Mexico have soared to unprecedented levels, with some 1,700 people dead so far this year, as an army-led crackdown intensifies turf wars between rival gangs, whose hitmen are increasingly taking their battles public with daylight shootouts in busy streets.
President Felipe Calderón began his crackdown in late 2006 but opinion polls show many Mexicans worry he is failing to gain the upper hand on cartels, who have grown bold enough to post threats or recruiting advertisements on street banners.
Hitmen, who are known to sometimes don police gear, often dump bodies with torture marks or severed heads in public, and while the vast majority of the victims are drug gang members, a few dozen civilians have been killed in street battles.
It was unclear if Sunday's victims had links to drug gangs, who have been known to target rival gangs' family members.
“They killed three girls and five male youths,” a local police source in Guamuchil said. Two others were injured.
Sinaloa state in northwestern Mexico is one of the areas most affected by drug violence and is home to Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.
Images on Mexican online media Sunday, some captured by witnesses on their cell phones, showed frantic shoppers rushing away from the mall in Mazatlan and screaming employees in the food mall seeking shelter as gun shots ring out.
“The alleged delinquents took hostages at a restaurant for several hours. There was a negotiation in which they got a vehicle for their exit. They took (two) hostages with them, then released them and escaped,” a spokesman for the Sinaloa government told Reuters Sunday.
Local media said Escobedo, who was shot when he refused to get in the gunmen's car, was a local police commander.
More than 500 policemen, including a handful of senior commanders, have been killed since Calderón's crackdown began.
Man, it is a good thing you can’t have guns in Mexico! /s
If anyone needed a reminder that Mexico is a third world country, here it is. This, in itself, is enough reason to prohibit citizens of Mexico from illegally entering our country. How do you know who is a murderous drug gang member and who isn’t? The short answer: you don’t.
There’s a news website out of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas that is full of stories of people being dragged out of the river. They aren’t shy either in posting pictures of the victims. Most have been executed. A few are Americans that came down to do dealings with the drug powers.
This is a good case of good men not doing what needs to be done. The locals certainly know which houses are drug houses.
Drug Prohibition is an illegitimate use of government power, it is not authorized by the US Constitution.
I don't understand why conservatives are so convinced to take over this failed liberal policy and make it their own. If you study the history of prohibition, you'll find that it is a liberal do-gooder policy to use the force of government power to mold people into their pre-determined form. Prohibition is the antithesis of conservativism.
If the druggies were only killing each other, it would be a GOOD thing. When the innocent get in the way, not so good.
BUILD THE WALL, NOW!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
Prayers for the victims. RIP.
Mexico has always been a violent place. Between 1910 - 1920, a third of the population died in a civil war. Another may be brewing. I’m done visiting there.
I thought they were ripe for one in the 1990s, but Clinton interfered and supported the Caudillos there by rescuing the peso.
Instead, the birthing cohort immigrated to the US, and had their babies here.
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