Customs Agents Beheaded In Mexico - Gunmen Kill Off Duty Soldiers In Mall

December 29, 2007

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Mexico’s drug wars are heating up with the cartels sending a powerful message to those who attempt to stop them.

Suspected drug smugglers have dumped the beheaded or mutilated bodies of five people around the Mexican capital in recent days in what appear to be revenge killings for a cocaine seizure at the airport.

The severed heads of two men who worked for a private customs firm were found near Mexico City airport on Saturday while their bodies appeared just outside the city.

One of the heads had an index finger stuffed in its mouth and the other had a finger in its ear.

Mexico’s attorney general said over the weekend agents had seized half a ton of cocaine found at the airport on a flight from Colombia.

Three other bodies, two of them headless and without an index finger, were found this week in Tlalnepantla on the edge of the city. The hands of the third body were chopped off. These three bodies have not been identified.

“By the way they were killed, it leads us to believe they were informants or that (drug dealers) were trying to send a message,” Elena Cardenas, a spokeswoman for Tlalnepantla municipality, said on Wednesday. “‘Listen, see, don’t talk,’ that’s their motto,” she said.

Mexico has been blighted by beheadings and other gory killings in a 3-year-old war between drug gangs for control of smuggling routes to the United States.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to violence hot spots.

While the operations have led to a string of high-profile busts, drug violence has still killed around 2,500 people this year.

On Wednesday, the attorney general’s office said it had seized nearly 2 million pills of over-the-counter cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine, which can be used to make the highly addictive methamphetamine.

Read More - Reuters

Beheadings by organized criminal elements are common in Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Michoacán states, where drug cartel operations are widespread. The gruesome tactic has not been used commonly in Mexico City, however. These incidents could be an ominous sign the tactic may be spreading to the heart of Mexico.

Strator

Off Duty Soldiers Shot In Mexico Shopping Mall

The men were shot in the back as they entered the mall in the normally quiet mining city of Torreon in Coahuila state near Texas on Tuesday afternoon, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

A member of Mexico’s air force who was with the soldiers was shot and seriously wounded in the attack.

The gunmen escaped, the ministry said.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops to the front lines of his war against powerful drug cartels in Mexico.

Calderon says more than 15,000 people linked to organized crime, including drug capos, have been arrested in 2007, and the Mexican military has made record drug seizures.

But drug cartels still wield power, especially along the border with the United States, killing rivals, police chiefs, soldiers and recently a politician.

Some 2,500 people have died in sometimes gory Mexican drug violence this year and government officials predict the killings will continue in 2008.

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