MEXICO CITY – Men armed with apparently a gang of drug dealers ambushed a police convoy on Thursday in central Mexico, killing eight state policemen and five prosecutors in a volley of gunfire, officials said.
The massacre of 13 policemen was the biggest police killing in the country since October 2019, when armed cartel men ambushed and killed 14 state policemen in the neighboring state of Michoacan.
The latest ambush sparked a major search for the killers in a gang-infested rural area southwest of Mexico City, which is surrounded on three sides by the State of Mexico. The dead policemen worked for the state.
Although the State of Mexico contains suburbs of the capital, it also includes lawless mountains and thickets like the one where the attack took place.
Rodrigo Martínez Celis, head of the state’s Department of Public Security, said soldiers, marines and National Guard troops were searching the area by land and air in search of the killers.
“The convoy was patrolling the region, precisely to combat criminal groups operating in the area,” said Martínez Celis. “This aggression is an attack on the Mexican government.
“We will respond with all our strength,” he added.
There was no immediate indication to which gang or cartel the snipers might belong. Several operate in the area around Coatepec Harinas, where the attack took place.
The city is close to a hot spring resort known as Ixtapan de la Sal, which is popular with Mexico City residents as a weekend getaway. But it is also relatively close to cities like Taxco, where authorities reported activities by the Guerreros Unidos gang apparently allied with the Jalisco cartel and the Arcelia gang, dominated by the criminal organization Familia Michoacán.
The attack appears to pose a challenge to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has adopted a strategy of not directly confronting drug cartels in an effort to prevent violence.