At least 20 people were killed and five injured when gunmen opened
fire in a bar late Friday in the northern city of Monterrey, where the gang is
fighting its former ally, the Gulf Cartel, said federal security spokesman
Alejandro Poire.
Eleven bodies shot with high-powered rifles were found earlier
Friday, piled near a water well on the outskirts of Mexico City, where the gang
is fighting the Knights Templar, Poire said. That is an offshoot of the La
Familia gang that has terrorized its home state of Michoacan.
He said another 10 people were found dead early Saturday in various
parts of the northern city of Torreon, where the gang is fighting the Sinaloa
cartel headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
"The violence is a product of this criminal rivalry ...
surrounding the intent to control illegal activities in a community, and not
the only the earnings that come with it, but also with transporting drugs to
the United States," Poire said in a news conference.
Poire provided no more details on the killings in Torreon in the
border state of Coahuila.
Coahuila state officials said the 10 bodies in Torreon had been
mutilated and left in a sports-utility vehicle. Seven of the victims were men
and three were women, and all had been killed several days earlier, said
Fernando Olivas, a state prosecutor's representative in Torreon.
In Monterrey, 16 people died at the Sabino Gordo bar in the worst
mass killing in memory in the northern industrial city, where violence has
spiked since the Gulf and Zetas broke their alliance early last year. Four
others died later at the hospital and five were injured, said Jorge Domene,
security spokesman for the state of Nuevo Leon, where Monterrey is located.
Other downtown businesses closed earlier than usual after news of
the massacre broke.
In Valle de Chalco, a working class suburb southeast of Mexico City,
a man was found alive among the dumped bodies and was taken to a hospital, said
Antonio Ortega, a spokesman for the Mexico State police.
He said some of the bodies were blindfolded and had their hands
tied. Poire said one woman was found seriously injured.
State officials said police found another body nearby a few hours
later but could not confirm it was related to the mass attack.
Ortega said he didn't know if the victims were shot at the scene or
were taken to site.
The capital region has been largely spared the widespread drug
violence that grips parts of Mexico.
But some poorer areas of the sprawling metropolis of 20 million
people have begun to see killings and decapitations committed by street gangs
that are remnants of splintered drug cartels.
In another incident allegedly involving Zetas, the Mexican Navy said
Friday it rescued a former mayor of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, who
had been kidnapped along with his son. Four alleged Zeta members were arrested
at the scene after an anonymous tip informed the navy of former Mayor Humberto
Valdez's abduction Thursday, according to the Navy statement.
Poire repeated the government insistence that criminals, not the
government's crackdown on organized crime, are causing the violence. More than
35,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon stepped up the attack
on organized crime in 2006, according to official figures. Some groups put the
number at more than 40,000.
"The violence won't stop if we stop battling criminals,"
Poire said. "The violence will diminish as we accelerate our capacity to
debilitate the gangs that produce it." Federal authorities apprehended La
Familia's alleged leader in late June, claiming the arrest was a debilitating
blow to the gang. Jose de Jesus Mendez Vargas was alleged to be the last remaining
head of the cartel, whose splinter group, the Knights Templar, continues to
fight for control of areas La Familia once dominated.
Mexican authorities also arrested Jesus Enrique Rejon Aguilar, a
co-founder of the Zetas drug cartel who is suspected of involvement in the
February killing of a US customs agent.
