Soldiers and federal police poured into the violent border city of Tijuana on Wednesday, manning checkpoints and inspecting local police stations as part of President Felipe Calderon's latest offensive against powerful drug gangs.
Backed by helicopters, planes and boats, the force descending on the city across the border from San Diego, California will eventually consist of 3,300 troops, Mexico's government has said. It was not clear exactly how many had entered Tijuana by Wednesday night.
Soldiers went into at least two local police stations and checked the documents and weapons of hundreds of officers.
PHOTO: AP
Federal investigators allege there is a corrupt network of police in the city supporting traffickers who smuggle tonnes of cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana over the busy border crossing into the US. There were no immediate reports of arrests.
Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon has welcomed the troops but some residents complained about the military checkpoints in the city.
"It's good that they do these operations but this seems a bit over the top," said Raul Gonzales after soldiers ordered him out of his car and searched him from head to toe on Wednesday. "I'm just going out with my family."
Dubbed "Operation Tijuana," the mobilization is the second major military offensive against drug gangs by Calderon, who took office on Dec. 1 promising to crack down on organized crime.
Last month, he sent 7,000 troops to his native state of Michoacan in western Mexico, which has been plagued by execution-style killings and beheadings as rival gangs fight over marijuana plantations and smuggling routes.
Calderon made his first visit to these troops at a base in the Michoacan city of Apatzingan on Wednesday, donning a green army cap and jacket for a breakfast with 200 agents.
"This is not an easy task nor will it be fast," Calderon said. "It will take a long time, imply using enormous resources and even unfortunately the loss of human lives."
But, he added, "if we continue working as we have been until now, our cities and our land will not remain in the hands of criminals."
Drug gangs were blamed for more than 2,000 murders nationwide last year and have left a particularly bloody trail in Michoacan and Tijuana, where more than 300 people were slain last year.
The gangs have taken to decapitating their victims and leaving their heads in front of government buildings, dumping them on public beaches and even rolling them onto a nightclub dance floor.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS