Mexico gunmen kill twelve police

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Twelve police officers were killed as the result of an ambush by gunmen in Guerrero, a state in the south of Mexico, authorities confirmed yesterday. The police officers were examining the area to find the bodies of ten individuals, whose separated heads have previously been discovered, at the time of the attack.

According to Arturo Martinez, speaking on behalf of the state police force of Guerrero, six of the policemen killed in the attack were local, while the other six were working for the state. In the attack, which occurred in the city of Teloloapan Sunday, an additional nine police experienced injuries for which they were hospitalised, BBC News Online reported. Eleven officers involved in the incident experienced wounds, according to The Associated Press.

Martinez explained that the officers, who were occupying six police vehicles between them, were searching for the bodies of three females and seven males after their separated heads were abandoned and discovered at a slaughterhouse in Teloloapan. Amongst the severed heads, threats directed at La Familia Michoacana, a drug-related business located in neighbouring state Michoacán, were discovered.

Guerrero is a state known for containing plantations of opium poppies and cannabis, as well as violence related to drug cartels. In excess of 47,000 deaths have been recorded across the whole of Mexico since current President Felipe Calderón commenced the Drug 'War' in December 2006.

Pope Benedict XVI has a visit to the country scheduled for Friday. According to BBC News Online, comment about violence relating to drug businesses in Mexico is anticipated from him.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

The Associated Press. "Mexican police killed during hunt for headless bodies" — The Guardian, March 20, 2012
"Mexican policemen killed after beheadings" — BBC News Online, March 19, 2012

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License