Three police officers killed in shootout with cartel militants in Mexico City
Three policemen and one suspect were killed, seven suspected drug cartel members were arrested Friday after a dramatic shootout on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City.
It was a glimpse of the drug cartel violence that is rarely seen in the nation’s capital, but which has become a frequent occurrence in the northern and western parts of the country.
Police said two officers were killed in a city east of the capital early Friday morning when they approached a house where a gang of kidnappers and murderers were allegedly hiding, according to police from the state of Mexico City, which borders the capital. They said Murder suspects are also being sought..
Before the shooting began, four abduction victims were found in the house. The first shootout took place near the city of San Antonio la Isla, about 35 miles east of the capital.
Then the suspects escaped by car in Mexico City, and continued firing at the pursuing officers, killing one metropolitan policeman. The suspects then crashed their car into a lamp post. Some were injured in the crash and some fled on foot but were apprehended.
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One woman was among those arrested. Among the weapons found at the crime scene were high powered rifles.
City police chief Omar Garcia Harfuch said the suspects appeared to be working for hyper-violent Jalisco cartel. “They say they belong to some group in Jalisco,” said Garcia Harfuch. “They carried insignia associated with the Jalisco cartel.”
He said the suspects were trying to get to the gang’s safe house, which apparently operated in Mexico City.
Three police officers were killed by suspected drug cartel members in a shootout.
Mexico City officials have long acknowledged that the country’s main drug cartels have a presence in the capital. But they claim a massive Mexico City police force – some say as many as 90,000 officers – and terrible traffic jams prevent cartel operatives from operating openly in the city as they do elsewhere.
Garcia Harfuch was himself a target Jalisco cartel on the attack of 2020 on a street in Mexico City.
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During the 2020 attack, about two dozen militants ambushed Garcia Harfuh’s armored personnel carrier before dawn on one of the capital’s main boulevards. As a result of a brazen attack, he received three bullet wounds, and two of his bodyguards and a passerby were killed.
Famous Mexican journalist Ciro Gomez Leyva escaped the attack shocked but unharmed last December, when two gunmen on a motorcycle tried to kill him during a night attack on a Mexico City street. He was saved by the fact that his SUV was bulletproof.
During the raids and searches that led to the arrest of 11 suspects, police found a cap with the letters CJNG, the initials of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.