Gunmen entered a busy Nuevo Laredo plaza and laid out the nude bodies of four slain men next to their severed heads on a sheet late on Friday, police said.
“We got a call and members of several police forces rushed to the site to investigate,” a municipal police officer who declined to give his name said on Saturday.
The sheet had a message apparently signed by members of the Gulf drug cartel that was aimed at a rival gang. The officer did not divulge the content of the message.
The gunmen arranged the macabre scene in full view of horrified pedestrians in the busy downtown area, the officer said.
Nuevo Laredo, population 350,000, is one of the busiest commercial crossing points of goods from Mexico into the US. It borders the US state of Texas.
The Gulf cartel is engaged in a bitter war to control the lucrative drug smuggling routes into the US with the Zetas, its former allies, a group made up of former military commandos.
Meanwhile, a judge has authorized 40 days of detention for an alleged Zetas member suspected in the killing of a US immigration agent.
The Attorney General’s Office said the judge’s order will allow federal investigators to conduct a more thorough investigation of Julian Zapata Espinoza’s alleged involvement with the drug cartel.
Zapata Espinoza is the main suspect in the Feb. 15 killing of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata.
The office said in a statement on Saturday that the judge ordered that eight other people arrested along with Zapata Espinoza also be held for 40 days. Two of them are suspected of taking part in the attack, which also wounded US immigration agent Victor Avila.
More than 36,400 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug wars since 2006, when the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon deployed some 50,000 soldiers and police across the country to crack down on the drug trade.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of