Gunmen tossed a grenade at an ambulance and then opened its doors to kill a patient inside who had narrowly survived an earlier shooting in a drug cartel-plagued Mexican state on Friday. Paramedics ran for their lives during the attack.
Vehicles carrying four masked gunmen cut off the ambulance around 2am as it carried the 23-year-old man to a hospital in Morelia, the capital on Michoacan state, a report from the state prosecutor’s office said.
Assailants tossed a fragmentation grenade at the ambulance, setting it on fire, and the two paramedics ran away, the police report said. The gunmen then opened the back doors and fired at the patient and his wife, who was accompanying him.
PHOTOS: AFP
The man died and the 20-year-old woman was listed in serious condition. No arrests have been made.
The state prosecutor’s office said the victim had been taken to a local hospital by his family on Sunday night after being wounded in a shootout between rival gangs in Uruapan, a center of Mexico’s avocado industry. He was being transferred early on Friday to a better-equipped hospital in the state capital.
Another man wounded in the attack remains hospitalized and is being guarded by city police, officials said.
Uruapan, a city of 240,000 people, has been hard hit by drug violence that has killed more than 10,800 people nationwide since 2006. The mayor is among seven detained mayors charged on Thursday with protecting members of La Familia drug cartel.
Assailants in 2006 entered an Uruapan bar and dumped five human heads on a dance floor.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers to Michoacan since taking office in 2006. Since then, gangs under pressure have unleashed unprecedented killings, attacking police, soldiers and rival smugglers.
Also on Friday, authorities in the border city of Ciudad Juarez said they would step up patrols after killings there rebounded to levels near those that led the government to send in 5,000 army troops in March.
The killings in Ciudad Juarez — most of which are believed to be drug-related — had declined to about one per day after the army sent troops there in March to patrol the streets.
But the state Attorney General’s office said killings have risen again to an average of between eight and nine per day. Through the middle of this month, there were 800 killings in the border city across from El Paso, Texas, a level similar to the approximately 1,600 deaths in June last year.
Late on Wednesday, four teenagers were shot to death on a Ciudad Juarez street by gunmen wielding assault rifles. The four were between the ages of 16 and 18.
Chihuahua state Public Safety Secretary Victor Valencia said that local, state and federal forces had decided to step up patrols in the most dangerous parts of the city, and increase checks of suspicious vehicles.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese