Mexican police say they chased a suspected drug cartel hit man through the streets of Tijuana and into a crowded casino, arresting him and an accomplice after hundreds of frightened gamblers were ordered to the floor.
Mexico’s federal Public Security Department said the suspects arrested Friday are believed to be Ruben Rios Estrada, a key gunman for the Arellano-Felix cocaine cartel, and Hector Manuel Mora Mendoza, another suspected gang member. They were flown to Mexico City under heavy guard, the agency said.
Federal troops and policemen chased the suspects at high speed through the streets before they fled into the casino, the department said. Federal agents caught them as they gambled, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, citing witness accounts.
The casino company — owned by former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon — complained to local newspapers that the raid by masked, heavily armed police terrified and endangered some 1,300 customers.
Federal police said they found a shotgun, two pistols, hundreds of bullets and five shirts emblazoned with police insignia in the suspects’ vehicle.
Elsewhere in the border region, Mexican authorities are struggling to maintain even minimal law and order in the face of the drug cartels’ power.
Hours after the dramatic raid south of San Diego, police in Chihuahua state found the bullet-riddled body of Villa Ahumada’s newly appointed police chief Jesus Blanco Cano on a ranch outside the town, about 130km south of El Paso, Texas, said Alejandro Pariente, a spokesman for the regional deputy attorney general’s office.
Blanco, 40, had been on the job for just a day before he was beaten, blindfolded and shot with his hands tied behind his back.
Twelve bullet casings were found at the scene.
The previous police chief, two other officers and three residents were killed in May when 70 gunmen barged into Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people virtually taken over by drug gangs.
The rest of its 20-member police force then quit in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over, and in the months since then, the town had slowly been recruiting new officers, without a police chief until Blanco took the job. The troops eventually left.
Five of the town’s eight new police officers — who still don’t carry guns — quit in fear Friday night, according to Jose Aguilar, one of the remaining police. Soldiers from Ciudad Juarez patrolled after the chief’s body was found, Aguilar said.
At least two other police officers were killed in attacks since Friday night.
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
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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
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