Attacks in Mexican border city kill at least 14 people

At least 14 people died in the Mexican border city of Reynosa on Saturday after a convoy of shooters went on a rampage, authorities said, a somber reminder of the violence that has ravaged the U.S. neighbor for added than a decade.

A spokesman for Tamaulipas state’s secretary of public security said Sunday that the attackers will seemingly be members of a splinter faction of the Gulf Cartel, which has a presence in great swaths of the Mexican state that borders Texas.

The attacks could well maintain derived from a dispute between rival teams over territorial regulate of the set of abode and dominance over illicit operations including drug trafficking and human trafficking, Luis Alberto Rodríguez, the spokesman, told The Washington Put up on Sunday. Four suspects also died, he said.

The State Coordinating Neighborhood for Peace Building in Tamaulipas, an agency coordinating security forces and legislation enforcement, said the attacks began early in the afternoon, when shooters in vehicles attacked a entire lot of neighborhoods in Reynosa, about 10 miles south of McAllen, Tex.

In a joint operation, the Mexican navy and state police fanned out across the city to find the attackers, according to a statement from the agency.

State police realized suspects who resisted arrest and shot at them, the statement said, earlier than officers fired support and killed two men and one woman.

State authorities said Sunday that they are investigating conceivable motives behind the killings and looking for diverse shooters.

During a shootout with state police, one other suspect turned into as soon as killed. After that confrontation, police arrested one man and realized two females in the trunk of his automobile who are believed to had been kidnapped, said the agency that coordinates security forces. Three sport-utility vehicles and one long gun had been realized at the scene.

The coordinating agency launched no indispensable points concerning the 14 people killed by attackers, but native media reports said one family could well had been killed.

Tamaulipas Gov. Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca said in a statement Sunday that he has ordered a “fleet” investigation.

“I declare my cohesion to the families of the innocent victims that died as penalties of these actions of organized crime in Reynosa,” the statement said.

Cabeza de Vaca also criticized the federal authorities, urging it to “steal its accountability” in combating “people that threaten the protection, well being and balance” of Mexican communities, suggesting the pervasive violence in the border state is introduced on in allotment by an absence of action from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

“Criminal organizations must receive a certain, declare and stern signal from the federal authorities that there will seemingly be no set of abode for impunity, nor tolerance facing criminal conduct,” the governor’s statement added.

Eduardo Guerrero, a security analyst essentially essentially based in Mexico City, said the governor’s swipe turned into as soon as a response to what critics maintain called a lenient stance on drug crime.

“The president arrived in energy with a rhetoric of nonconfrontation with a ‘Hugs, no longer gunshots’ slogan that has led to federal forces having a passive presence in certain areas of the country, which has empowered criminal organizations to behave extra freely,” Guerrero said.

López Obrador, continuously referred to by his initials, AMLO, has said he would no longer repeat the errors of old administrations that didn’t contain cartel violence, which surged after President Felipe Calderón launched a navy crackdown on the gangs in 2006. López Obrador has inquisitive about social applications to variety out the roots of crime.

He has also deployed navy, as his predecessors did, and created a national guard to acknowledge to the violence.

Guerrero has acknowledged extra than 210 cartels, gangs and regional bands operating across the country, of which 13 are in Tamaulipas. One is Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación — the Unique Generation Jalisco cartel — one in all the most extremely effective drug organizations in Mexico.

The Cartel del Golfo — the Gulf drug cartel — has nearly disappeared after splintering into teams across the state that are involved in a wide fluctuate of criminal actions, from oil theft to palms trafficking, drug trafficking and human trafficking, Guerrero said.

Drug-related violence in Tamaulipas has reduced in the previous few years thanks to better-trained and better-coordinated police, Guerrero added, but these efforts maintain no longer stopped blood from flowing in Reynosa.

Saturday’s attacks come amid scandals that threaten to oust the governor. Cabeza de Vaca is below an investigation for alleged links to organized crime teams, money laundering and tax evasion, according to the Mexican attorney original’s administrative heart, which introduced in Can also that the U.S. Justice Department has shared a case file on Cabeza de Vaca. López Obrador said during a Can also news conference that the FBI is investigating the governor for alleged money laundering.

Cabeza de Vaca has denied the accusations, which he called baseless and politically motivated.

The governor turned into as soon as scrutinized after authorities arrested a entire lot of members of an elite special operations neighborhood during an investigation into the January massacre of 19 people, including 13 Guatemalan migrants, shut to the U.S.-Mexico border.

For additional than a decade, Mexico has experienced outrageous violence linked to organized crime as drug cartels battle over strategic routes to the United States. Lately, they maintain got diverse into an array of diverse unlawful actions. The Gulf, Northeast and Jalisco cartels are fighting for regulate over Tamaulipas’s lucrative drug and palms trafficking routes to and from the United States.