The No. 2 police officer in a Mexican border city across from Texas was shot dead on Saturday, the latest high-ranking official killed in an onslaught of attacks blamed on gangs resisting a crackdown.
Gunman sprayed Juan Antonio Roman Garcia’s car with bullets outside his home in Ciudad Juarez, officials said. The attack came months after his name appeared at the top of a hit list left at a monument for fallen police officers.
Mexico has been shaken by a wave of drug-related violence as gangs battle security forces and each other for control of trafficking routes north.
The son of suspected Sinaloa cartel chief Joaquin Guzman was killed in a shootout on Thursday in another northern city. The same day, Mexico’s acting federal police chief, Edgar Millan Gomez, was gunned down in front of his Mexico City home.
Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, said on Friday that the attacks against police showed weakened gangs were trying to counter his fight against drug trafficking. Since taking office in 2006, Calderon has sent more than 25,000 soldiers into states throughout Mexico to combat drug gangs.
More than 200 people have been killed this year in Ciudad Juarez, a Chihuahua state city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas, that is home base for the Juarez cartel. The government deployed more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to Chihuahua in March.
Several people on the hit list have been killed, and none of the perpetrators have been caught. Government officials displayed video footage of the list at a news conference on Saturday, with Roman Garcia’s name at the top.
His death has plunged the city into mourning because he was an exemplary officer with an impeccable 20-year record who fulfilled his duties until his last breath, despite the dangers,” Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said.
Although he vowed his government would not be intimidated, Ferriz said all police officers had been ordered to take added precautions.
“We know that organized crime will keep up the violence,” he said.
More than 2,500 people have died across Mexico this year in crime and drug-related violence.
Joaquin Guzman’s son, Edgar, was shot dead in the Sinaloa State capital of Culiacan on Thursday, said an official with the federal Attorney General’s office who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
Mexican media reports said gunmen opened fire on Edgar Guzman in the parking lot of a shopping center. About 500 bullet casings from AK-47 rifles were found at the site, El Universal and Reforma newspapers said.
Also killed in the attack was Arturo Meza Cazares. Meza is the son of Blanca Margarita Cazares, whom the US has identified as a key money launderer for the cartel.
Joaquin Guzman escaped from prison in 2001 and allegedly started a turf war that has killed hundreds of people. He is one of Mexico’s most-wanted fugitives.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS