Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the US border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday.
The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints.
"This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," an official from the Baja California state attorney general's office said.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has been using some 25,000 troops and federal police to battle powerful organized crime gangs and drug cartels since he came to power a year ago.
The government sent hundreds more troops to Tijuana and Rosarito late last month and disarmed Rosarito's police force after a failed attempt to kill the town's police chief raised suspicions it was infiltrated by drug gangs.
The police executions were the first drug-related murders in Baja California, Mexico's most violent state, this year.
Last year, the state counted more than 400 drug-related killings as more than 2,500 people were killed nationwide in spite of the military assault on traffickers.
Meanwhile, a cousin of the president was abducted at gunpoint, beaten and held for several hours, local media reported on Thursday.
Mexican dailies Reforma and Milenio said armed men seized businessman Alfonso Reyes in the western state of Michoacan on Wednesday but dropped him back home four hours later.
It was not clear whether the abduction was related to the president and his battle against organized crime, and Calderon's office could not immediately confirm the incident.
Abductions for extortion are common in Mexico, which has one of the world's highest kidnapping rates. Most common are "express kidnappings," where gangs abduct victims for a few hours and force them to withdraw cash from bank machines.
Mexican news agency Quadratin, which first reported the story, said Calderon's brother had confirmed the abduction. It did not know whether a ransom was paid or any cash extorted.
Reyes, a middle-aged businessman, was seized while driving with his wife in the state capital of Morelia. where he owns a foreign exchange business. Milenio daily said the abduction was related to his work.
"They got him out of his van, handcuffed him, beat him and put him in the kidnappers' vehicle. Later we found out from Felipe Calderon's brother that they had freed his cousin," Quadratin reporter Jonathan Arredondo said.
A spokeswoman for Michoacan's state attorney-general's office said they were not pursuing the case after they called his home and Reyes answered the phone.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of