Gunmen kidnapped nine police officers investigating a death in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero and the bodies of two of the lawmen were found later, authorities said on Saturday.
Fernando Monreal Leyva, director of the State Investigative Police, said one of his agency’s commanders and a team of eight agents had gone to identify and recover a body in a northern part of the state on Friday. He said contact was lost with the group that afternoon and officials learned the officers had been seized by an unknown gang of gunmen.
Searchers found the bodies of two officers near El Revelado, the community where the police group was kidnapped, Monreal said. He said the Mexican army was helping police search for the other missing officers.
Several drug gangs are battling for control of smuggling routes in Guerrero state.
In another part of Guerrero, unidentified men traveling in two vehicles threw two human heads into a refreshment stand in Coyuca de Catalan, state police said. One of the heads was blindfolded with duct tape.
Monreal said the incident was not connected to the kidnapping of his officers.
Authorities in Ciudad Juarez, a northern border city gripped by drug violence, said police arrested two alleged leaders of the Aztecs gang linked to at least 10 murders, including the killing of a federal police officer last month.
The detainees were identified as Gonzalo Dominguez Sanchez, known as “El Chore,” and Eduardo Rocha, alias “El Dienton,” both 29.
Federal police said Dominguez was the successor to alleged Aztecs leader Jesus Ernesto Chavez Castillo, “El Camello,” who was arrested on July 2. Rocha was described as the gang’s second in command.
Federal police said the men were caught with an AR-15 rifle, two loaded pistols and more than 1.6kg of cocaine.
In northeastern Mexico, troops killed three suspected drug cartel gunmen in a gunbattle and also freed a kidnap victim near the industrial city of Monterrey, the Mexican Defense Department said on Saturday.
A military statement said soldiers responding to an anonymous tip in the town of Mina, in Nuevo Leon state, were fired on by three gunmen traveling in an SUV with Texas license plates on Friday afternoon. The three attackers were killed and troops recovered three rifles, two grenades, 475 bullets and four military-style uniforms, the army said.
Later on Friday, soldiers came across an SUV that had crashed against the wall of a bridge in the town of Sabinas Hidalgo, also in Nuevo Leon, the press release continued.
Soldiers found a man with a bulletproof jacket inside the vehicle, along with an AK-47 rifle and three ammunition clips. Meanwhile, Mexican soldiers deactivated a bomb at a mall in central Mexico on Saturday, but it was not clear if the incident was tied to the country’s drug war, Mexican newspaper Milenio reported.
A message from a criminal group was left with the bomb in Leon, Milenio said. There was no information on the nature of the group. Authorities in Leon, a city of about 1 million people, were not immediately available for comment.
The newspaper said workers found an “explosive device” in the mall’s parking lot and alerted authorities. Army troops deactivated it. Nobody was reported injured.
Mexican drug gangs started using car bombs this year to target police, but have so far not used bombs against the general population.
Four people were killed in July in Ciudad Juarez by a bomb planted in a car, the first such attack since Mexican Presidenty Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.
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