7 Mexican police officers killed in Ciudad Juarez
AP
By OLIVIA TORRES, Associated Press Writer Olivia Torres, Associated Press Writer – Fri Apr 23, 11:42 pm ET
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen ambushed two police vehicles at a busy intersection in Ciudad Juarez on Friday, killing seven officers and a 17-year-old boy who was passing by, authorities said.
Chihuahua state spokesman Enrique Torres Valadez said six of the police officers were federal, and one was a local police woman. Two local police officers remain in critical condition.
Authorities said the police officers had stopped to talk to a street vendor who had flagged them down for help when gunmen opened fire from behind their pickup patrol trucks. The assailants then fled in three vehicles.
Investigators said they don't know why the officers were shot, although they don't believe they were targeted because of any recent arrests they had made.
No one has been arrested but police said they have recovered two of the three cars used in the shooting.
Ciudad Juarez is one of the world's deadliest cities, and a two-year turf battle between drug cartels has left more than 5,000 people dead.
Elsewhere, police in Guerrero said they found the bodies of five men who had been shot to death lying on a dirt road near Chilpancingo, the capital of the Pacific coast state. Three of the men were brothers, all in their 20s.
The state has been a major battleground for warring cartels, including the Beltran Leyva gang, but it was not clear whether the shootings were part of the ongoing drug violence.
In Morelos state, federal police and the Mexican army raided two ranch homes and arrested 15 men near the town of Amacuzac. Those arrested were taken to Mexico City in a helicopter.
The men are suspected of working for Jose Gerardo Alvarez Vazquez, who was arrested in Mexico City on Wednesday, said Ramon Pequeno, the head of the anti-narcotics division of Mexico's federal police.
Pequeno said the men provided security and carried out killings for Alvarez Vazquez and his partner Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S.-born enforcer known as "La Barbie."
Authorities say Alvarez Vazquez and Valdez Villarreal are battling for control of the Beltran Leyva cartel.
In the western state of Michoacan, a mayor of a drug-plagued town arrested last year for alleged ties drug traffickers was released from prison late Friday.
Genaro Guisar Valencia, who was stripped by lawmakers of his post as mayor of Apatzingan because of his arrest, told reporters outside the prison in the state capital of Morelia that he would ask the state's legislature to revert its decision.
Guisar Valencia was among 12 Mexican mayors arrested last year in an unprecedented roundup of elected officials accused of protecting drug traffickers in the state of Michoacan.
He's the ninth mayor released for lack of evidence.
An estimated 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since December 2006.
Eds: CORRECTS that bystander killed was a teenage boy, sted teenage girl, UPDATES with two officers in critical conditions.
