Mexican gang violence kills 21

A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the US-Mexican border region, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead.

The violence on Tuesday started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 130km south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua State.

Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said.

Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead on Tuesday, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded.

Mexico has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said on Monday that more than 6000 people have died in drug-related violence.

Villa Ahumada, a town of 1500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was able to recruit new officers.

The town’s mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state capital for his own safety.

Also on Tuesday, Tijuana city police said emergency officials responding to a report of a car on fire found a sport utility vehicle engulfed in flames and two charred bodies inside.

And in Tepotzotlan, a small town outside Mexico City, two heads in coolers were found inside a car, according to an official with the Mexico state prosecutor’s office, who was not authorised to give her name. The heads were accompanied by a message threatening the municipal police chief. Decapitations have become commonplace in Mexico’s drug violence.

In other violence late on Monday, armed men forced their way into a Mexican prison in Torreon, then killed three prisoners by beating them and setting them on fire in a bathroom. The assailants also freed nine inmates before escaping, state prosecutors said in a statement on Tuesday.

Fighting between rival gangs left another two inmates dead on Tuesday at an overcrowded prison in central Mexico, said Carlos Gil Abarca, a spokesman for the prevention and rehabilitation office of the Mexico state government.



Mexican gang violence kills 21