Drug insurgents now killing non combatants

Houston Chronicle:

Many Mexicans have long shrugged off the violence shaking their country by telling themselves it only affects those involved in the narcotics trade and corrupt law enforcement officers.

But innocent civilians, once considered largely off-limits, now find themselves increasingly targeted.

In the past five days, two attacks in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa claimed the lives of perhaps more than a dozen people with no apparent connection to the drug trade — including at least four teens, a 12-year-old girl and a father-and-son team of university accounting professors.

In a separate incident, dozens of people were taken hostage Saturday at a restaurant in Mazatlan, Sinaloa's premiere beach resort and seaport. The assassins killed an officer and fled the mall in a van with 10 of the hostages, later freeing them unharmed and making their escape.

"That they are killing civilians speaks to the monster that has been created," said Yudit del Rincon Castro, an outspoken Sinaloa state legislator from Guamuchil. "They used to respect women, children, innocents. Now when they go after someone they don't care who they hit along with them."

Some 550 people have been killed in Sinaloa, a state with 2.5 million people, since the beginning of the year, according to the newspaper Noroeste in Culiacan, the state capital.

The Sunday massacre occurred about 1 a.m. when gunmen opened fire on mostly young people traveling in four cars down the main street in Guamuchil, a farm town about 40 miles north of Culiacan. In a storm of bullets — police recovered some 300 spent cartridges at the scene — eight people were killed and five others gravely injured.

The fatalities included three adults, four teenagers and a 12-year-old girl.

Police arrived more than half an hour after the shooting, though the killings took place within blocks of both state and municipal police headquarters.

The slowness of the response may not be surprising: More than 30 men disguised as federal agents attacked Guamuchil's state police offices in mid-May. Although no police were killed, the attackers fired more than 800 rounds in the attack and tossed several hand grenades.

The two professors killed Thursday were among nine civilians gunned down at an auto mechanics shop just blocks from the Sinaloa governor's office in Culiacan, following the assassination of two state policemen nearby. The academics apparently were at the shop picking up a repaired car. Other civilians killed included the repair shop's owner and his employees.

"Enough already!" Hector Cuen, the rector of the Sinaloa Autonomous University, where the two professors taught, said in a weekend ceremony. "Many innocents have fallen in recent days amid the unleashed violence. It's unforgivable that so many upstanding people are affected."

Acting on a tip, state police Saturday arrested eight men accused in Thursday's killings. The men possessed a U.S.-made anti-tank weapon, a grenade launcher and 10 automatic rifles when they were arrested, police said. Officials identified the men as employees of Arturo Beltran Leyva, one of Sinaloa's most powerful gangsters.

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When they start killing the non combatants it will light up the tip line to the government. They will also lose their Robin Hood persona. I think it is a major mistake by the drug insurgents who have been put under stress by their rival warfare and the governments attempts to stop them.

Mexico needs more force in the area. It would make it impossible to do these random acts of violence without detection.