Soldiers Kill Another 5 Cartel Gunmen in Northern Mexican State


MONTERREY, Mexico – Mexican army soldiers killed five suspected members of the violent Los Zetas cartel and captured three police who were protecting them in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, one day after another clash in that region that ended with 27 gunmen slain, officials said.

A report from Monterrey’s municipal police force said the more recent of the two clashes occurred around 8:00 a.m. Friday on a highway east of the city.

The initial report stated that an SUV carrying five hit men was parked on the shoulder of the highway and protected by three police officers from the Monterrey suburb of Juarez.

An anonymous call alerted the soldiers to the presence of the armed men; when the troops arrived at the scene, a clash ensued that ended with all five cartel enforcers killed.

That gun battle and another less than 24 hours earlier in Nuevo Leon – at a spot near the border with the neighboring state of Tamaulipas – resulted in the deaths of 32 suspected members of Los Zetas at the hands of soldiers with the 7th Military Zone.

The earlier gun battle took place after a military helicopter spotted a ranch about 125 kilometers (75 miles) east of Monterrey that Los Zetas were using as a training camp.

About 100 elite troops from the 7th Military Zone made their way to the “narco-camp” on foot, while another group arrived by helicopter. Upon arrival, the soldiers came under fire from the gunmen, who had dug themselves in at different areas of the ranch.

“The shootout lasted an hour and a half,” a captain with the 7th Military Zone who participated in the operation said.

The corpses of young men with uniforms, bullet-proof vests and AR-15 rifles at their side, who had been slain by gunshots to the head, were observable from the entrance to the ranch, Efe confirmed.

The soldiers were continuing to comb the area in search of more bodies, since the corpses of some hit men were hidden amid the dense thicket that abounds in that semi-desert area.

Others were found with gunshots to the head in different parts of the ranch, including one of the houses and among the trees.

An official told reporters that there were no casualties among the soldiers, saying the military instruction the army troops receive is far superior to the “shabby” training given to the cartel gunmen.

The ranch, which has three large buildings, had been used as a training center and safe house.

The soldiers also found three men with their hands tied inside the ranch’s main building and it is suspected that they were kidnapped in the town of Ciudad Mier, Tamaulipas.

A total of 19 vehicles, thousands of rounds of ammunition and about 530 assault rifle cartridges were confiscated from the main warehouse at the ranch.

The northern border state of Nuevo Leon has seen an uptick in violence since the early part of this year, the result of a turf battle between Los Zetas and the Gulf cartel that began in Tamaulipas.

In February, giant banners heralding an alliance of the Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia drug cartels against Los Zetas appeared in the northern city of Monterrey.

The cartels arrayed against Los Zetas blame the group’s involvement in kidnapping, armed robbery and extortion for discrediting “true drug traffickers” in the eyes of ordinary Mexicans inclined to tolerate the illicit trade as long as the gangs stuck to their own unwritten rule against harming innocents.

Gunmen working for Los Zetas also have been accused of carrying out the recent massacre of 72 illegal immigrants, who were discovered last week at a ranch in Tamaulipas.

More than 200 drug-related murders and kidnappings have occurred in Nuevo Leon since January, while Monterrey, the state capital and Mexico’s third-largest city, has also been hard hit by the violence.

 
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=365101&CategoryId=14091

All head shots?

Thrusts per squeeze.