MEXICO CITY – Gunmen from a drug gang attacked a police convoy in central Mexico on Thursday, killing eight state police officers and five investigators investigating the proceedings, officials said.
The massacre of 13 law enforcement officers for law enforcement after October 2019 is the only major murder in the country, when 14 state police officers were attacked and killed by state gunmen in the neighboring state of Mikokan.
A new search for the killers was carried out in a rural, tangled area west of southwestern Mexico City. Dead law enforcement officers worked for the state.
While Mexico has a suburb of the state capital, it also includes mountains of law and scrublands like the one that was attacked.
The head of the state’s public safety department, Rodrigo Martinez Salis, said troops, Marines and National Guard soldiers were combing the area from the ground and air in search of the killers.
“The convoy was definitely patrolling to fight criminal groups operating in the area,” Martinez Sellis said. “The attack is an attack on the Mexican government.
He added, “We will respond with all our might.”
No immediate indication was found as to which gang or cartel the gunmen belonged to. Some Cotepec are operating in the area around Harinas, where the attack took place.
The city is close to a hot springs resort known as Iktapan de la Sal, popular among Mexico City residents as a weekend getaway. But it is also closer than in cities like Texas, where officials have reported activities of explicit alliances by the Galleros Unidos gang, the Jalisco cartel, and the Arcelia gang, dominated by the Familia Mikoacan crime organization.
The attack poses a challenge to President Andrs Manuel López Obrador, who has adopted a strategy of not directly confronting drug cartels in an effort to avoid violence.
