Bombs planted by drug cartel in Mexico kill 4 police officers and 2 civilians

MEXICO CITY — A drug cartel detonated a coordinated series of seven roadside bombs in western Mexico that killed four police officers and two civilians, authorities said Wednesday. The Jalisco state governor said the explosions were “a trap” set by the cartel to kill law enforcement officers.

Luis Mendez, the chief prosecutor for the state of Jalisco, said the detonations Tuesday night in the municipality of Tlajomulco were so powerful that they left craters in the highway, destroyed at least four vehicles and injured 14 other people.

It appeared to be the first time a Mexican cartel had killed law enforcement with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and was the latest example of the increasingly open and military-style challenge posed by the country’s drug cartels.

Mendez said the two dead civilians were in a passing vehicle when the IEDs detonated in Tlajomulco, near the state capital of Guadalajara. He suggested that the bombs may have been detonated remotely, saying the explosion “happened at the time they wanted.”

He said 12 of the wounded were also civilians, including three children aged 9, 13 and 14. He said some of the injured were in serious condition. Experts had to defuse an eighth IED that did not detonate and warned that the area was still dangerous, Mendez said.

Enrique Alfaro, the governor of the state of Jalisco, said an anonymous call that gave a volunteer search party a lead to a clandestine burial site near the highway set officials up “a trap.”

For years, police have been unable to locate the more than 110,000 missing people in Mexico, but they accompany volunteer search parties looking for those hidden graves. The volunteers, usually the mothers of the missing people, are often given anonymous tips about where their relatives may be buried.

The governor of Jalisco, Enrique Alfaro, said that a total of eight “improvised explosive devices” were placed on the road.

“This is a brutal terrorist attack,” Alfaro said at a news conference on Wednesday, blaming an unidentified drug cartel for the deaths. He said he would temporarily suspend police escorts for voluntary searches for the safety of civilians.

Héctor Flores, leader of one of the search parties in Jalisco, said there did not appear to be any search volunteers in the convoy that was blown up.

“This is an unprecedented act that shows what these drug cartels are capable of,” Alfaro previously wrote on his social media accounts. “This attack also represents an open challenge to the Mexican government at all levels.”

Alfaro did not say who he suspected planted the bomb, but the Jalisco drug cartel has significant experience using improvised explosive devices, as well as bomb-dropping drones. IEDs also injured 10 soldiers in the neighboring state of Michoacán in 2022 and killed one civilian.

Earlier Tuesday, a federal official acknowledged that another cartel had used a car bomb to kill a National Guard officer in the neighboring state of Guanajuato.

And on Monday, in the neighboring state of Guerrero, protesters allied with another drug gang fought security forces, seized an armored police truck and used it to break down the doors of the state legislature building.

The area around Guadalajara has been the scene of bloody battles between factions of the Jalisco cartel, which has been blamed for the past use of improvised explosive devices in Mexico.

In February 2022, in the Michoacán municipality of Aguililla, a roadside mine damaged an army vehicle and injured 10 soldiers.

A few days later, another IED killed a farmer when he ran over the device in his truck. The farmer’s son was injured in the explosion, which was apparently fueled by a device containing ammonium nitrate.

Subsequently, special squads of Mexican army troops equipped with metal detectors and bomb suits were deployed to the area. Dozens of these artifacts were found along rural roads and fields around the village of Aguililla.

IEDs included devices detonated by radio or telephone signal, by pressure, such as when someone steps on them, or even by vials breaking open and combining two chemicals.

The Jalisco cartel has been fighting the local Viagras gang, also known as the United Cartels, for control of the area for years. Those battles have featured the use of trenches, pillboxes, homemade armored vehicles, and drones modified to drop small bombs.

The cartels’ bomb-carrying drones have caused more terror in Michoacán than land mines. While initially crude and dangerous to load and operate, and remains worryingly indiscriminate, drone warfare has gotten better; It’s not uncommon to see barn roofs or metal sheds split open like cans by the impact of drone blasts.

Tuesday’s IED attack in Tlajomulco dealt a blow to volunteer search parties because they rely on anonymous tips to find mass graves. Many times, searchers suspect that the leads come from former members of the same cartels who killed their relatives and dumped their bodies.

But the seekers have long operated under an uneasy, non-aggression understanding with the cartels; the volunteer groups stress that they are not looking for evidence to prosecute those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of family members. They say they just want to find the remains, put an end to their uncertainty and give their relatives a decent burial.

However, six volunteer search activists have been killed in Mexico since 2021. While the motives for those murders remain unclear, activists say the cartels have tried to intimidate searchers, especially if they investigate graves that are still being found. use.