Mayor shot dead in Mexico drug war flashpoint as governor vows to “punish those responsible”

Gunmen have killed the mayor of a city in the western Mexican state of Michoacan on Thursday, which was rocked by a deadly war between rival drug cartels, authorities said. Elsewhere in the avocado-producing area, clashes between suspected gang members left many dead, prosecutors said.

Aguililla Mayor Cesar Valencia was shot by unknown assailants as he was traveling in a town hall vehicle near a football stadium in the city, military personnel sent to the scene told AFP. According to the military, he suffered at least two gunshot wounds to the chest and neck.

“We unequivocally condemn the murder” wrote on Twitter Alfredo Ramirez Bedollagovernor of Michoacάνn, where cartels are at war over drug trafficking.

“I have issued instructions for a thorough investigation of the facts … and punishment of those responsible,” he added.

Mexican mayors and other local politicians are often the victims of multibillion-dollar violence linked to corruption and the drug trade.

Aguililla is his birthplace Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, head of the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel. The Ministry of Justice considers the Jalisco cartel “one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world.”

Oseguera, 55, is one of the most wanted fugitives in the United States, with a $ 10 million bounty on his head.

“It’s the number one priority for the DEA and, frankly, for federal law enforcement in the United States,” said Matthew Donahue, DEA’s top agent in Mexico. he told CBS News. “It has a huge amount of weapons, RPGs, 50 caliber weapons. It basically has its own SWAT teams.”

His hometown, with about 14,000 inhabitants, is one of the hardest hit by Mexico’s criminal violence, although the deployment of the army there in February brought some calm.

Prior to that, Aguililla lived in a state of near-siege due to cartel blockades, which also left improvised explosive devices behind.

Michoacan is the largest in the world avocado production area and threats against an American inspector who worked there last month prompted the United States to suspend fruit exports from Mexico for about a week.

Organized crime groups are fighting for some of the area’s agricultural wealth through robberies, kidnappings and extortion.

Five people were killed Thursday in clashes between two armed groups in Michoacάνn, one of which occupied the office of a mayor in the village of Nuevo Parangarikutiro, prosecutors said.

Security forces later regained control of the building, arrested 32 suspects and seized about 40 weapons, including a machine gun and an explosive device, the Michoacάνn state prosecutor’s office said.

Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 killings since the start of a controversial military anti-drug operation in 2006, most of which are accused of fighting between criminals, according to official figures.

Elsewhere, gunmen killed nine people in a drug-related attack on a home in central Mexico. The “execution” of six men and three women on Tuesday night shook a middle-class area of ​​the usually peaceful city of Atlixo, said Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa.

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• Mexico
• murder
• cartel