MEXICO: Four dead in Michoacan ambush

Record ID: 303974

  • Title: MEXICO: Four dead in Michoacan ambush
  • Date: 25th April 2010
  • Summary: DEAD MAN INSIDE CAR MORE OF WHITE CAR RIDDLE WITH BULLETS HIGH VIEW OF BODY ON GROUND WITH POLICE STANDING NEARBY TOP VIEW OF BODY ON GROUND WITH CHALK OUTLINE
  • Embargoed: 10th May 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mexico
  • Country: Mexico
  • Reuters ID: LVA3BV9SG3M18UUEAG9KL6MVHKID
  • Story Text: Michoacan's public security secretary is injured while four others, including her two bodyguards, are killed in an assassination attempt.
    Gunmen attacked the convoy of Michoacan's leading security official on Saturday (April 24) with assault rifles and grenades, killing four and injuring ten.
    The convoy, carrying Michoacan's Public Safety Secretary Minerva Bautista, who is recovering with non-life threatening injuries, was ambushed in the early hours of Saturday morning (April 24).
    Two of Bautista's bodyguards and two bystanders were killed in the ambush, which was carried out by 20 attackers whose identity and motive was not immediately clear.
    Drug violence is common in Mexican President Felipe Calderon's home state of Michoacan where La Familia drug cartel is locked in a fight with the Zetas for control of the verdant hills that hide marijuana plantations and labs that produce the party methamphetamine drug "Ice."
    La Familia, which mixes violence with pseudo-religion, says it is fighting the "destructive power" of the Zetas and offers to be a cartel that "helps families."
    Intensely violent, La Familia dumped the bodies of 12 federal police in a heap by a remote highway in July last year in revenge for the capture of a gang leader. A film of the police being killed was posted briefly on YouTube, according to media reports.
    A jump in civilian deaths in Mexico's drug war is hitting support for President Felipe Calderon's army-led crackdown as violence escalates, worrying Washington, scaring away tourists and freezing investment
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