MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Drug cartels' new weaponry means war
Email Picture
Felipe Salinas / Associated Press
Police officers drive past a burning police vehicle in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. In a three-week period, five grenade attacks were launched on police patrols and stations.
[COLOR=#333333! important]Narcotics traffickers are acquiring firepower more appropriate to an army -- including grenade launchers and antitank rockets -- and the police are feeling outgunned.[/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson [/color]
[COLOR=#999999! important]March 15, 2009 [/color]
Reporting from Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and Mexico City -- It was a brazen assault, not just because it targeted the city's police station, but for the choice of weapon: grenades.
The Feb. 21 attack on police headquarters in coastal Zihuatanejo, which injured four people, fit a disturbing trend of Mexico's drug wars. Traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals.
"There is an arms race between the cartels," said Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government.
"One group gets rocket-propelled grenades, the other has to have them."
There are even more ominous developments: Authorities reported three thefts of several hundred pounds of blasting material from industrial explosives plants in Durango during a four-day period last month. Authorities believe the material may have been destined for car bombs or remotely detonated roadside devices, which have been used with devastating effect in Iraq, killing more than 1,822 members of U.S.-led forces since the war there began nearly six years ago.
The Mexican army has recovered most of the material, and there has been no reported use of such devices.
Grenades or military-grade weapons have been reported in at least 10 Mexican states during the last six months, used against police headquarters, city halls, a U.S. consulate, TV stations and senior Mexican officials. In a three-week period ended March 6, five grenade attacks were launched on police patrols and stations and the home of a commander in the south-central state of Michoacan. Other such attacks occurred in five other states during the same period.
At least one grenade attack north of the border, at a Texas nightclub frequented by U.S. police officers, has been tied to Mexican traffickers.
How many weapons have been smuggled into Mexico from Central America is not known, and the military-grade munitions are still a small fraction of the larger arsenal in the hands of narcotics traffickers. Mexican officials continue to push Washington to stem the well-documented flow of conventional weapons from the United States, as Congress holds hearings on the role those smuggled guns play in arming Mexican drug cartels.
There is no comprehensive data on how many people have been killed by heavier weapons.
But four days after the assault on the Zihuatanejo police station, four of the city's officers were slain in a highway ambush six miles from town on the road to Acapulco. In addition to the standard AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles, the attackers fired at least six .50-caliber shells into the officers' pickup. The vehicle blew up when hit by what experts believe was a grenade or explosive projectile. The bodies of the officers were charred.
"These are really weapons of war," said Alberto Fernandez, spokesman for the Zihuatanejo city government. "We only know these devices from war movies."
U.S. law enforcement officials say they detected the smuggling of grenades and other military-grade equipment into Mexico about a year and a half ago, and observed a sharp uptick in the use of the weapons about six months ago.
The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years, in contrast to 59 seized over the previous two years.
The enhanced weaponry represents a wide sampling from the international arms bazaar, with grenades and launchers produced by U.S., South Korean, Israeli, Spanish or former Soviet bloc manufacturers. Many had been sold legally to governments, including Mexico's, and then were diverted onto the black market. Some may be sold directly to the traffickers by corrupt elements of national armies, authorities and experts say.
The single deadliest attack on civilians by drug traffickers in Mexico took place Sept. 15 at an Independence Day celebration in the central plaza of Morelia, hometown of President Felipe Calderon and capital of Michoacan. Attackers hurled fragmentation grenades at the celebrating crowd, killing eight people and wounding dozens more.
Amid the recent spate of attacks in Michoacan, federal police on Feb. 20 announced the discovery of 66 fragmentation grenades in the fake bottom of a truck intercepted in southern Mexico, just over the border from Guatemala. The two men arrested with the cargo told police they were transporting the grenades to Morelia.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d08a936e-0ff9-...fd2ac.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/...ory?page=1
NOTE: We were told by a Mexican Army informat that a major push is in the works for next week... roadside bombings and an attempt to blow up the 'Bridge of the Americas", between Juarez and El Paso. Also, "... the border town south of Columbus New Mexico will come under fire because there is a rival gang from the Baja holding up there and stockpiling weapons in and around the Mexican town...".
This area is under control at present by the Gulf faction of the Gulf Cartel and has control of that cross over point. The informat says its going to be a real "Blood Bath". ref; Mexican Army and Mexican Police Intell report. The American Border Patrol is on 'High Alert".
Stay tune. If it happens.... you heard it first on this FORUM.
note:
Keep your eyes on a little very little known Mexican town called "Palomas", south of Columbus New Mexico..., as well as another small crosover point on the Arizona border called, 'Aqua Prieta', south of Douglas Arizona. In the next few weeks things may prove very interesting if our information proves true.
(motive? Information before the fact) Our Federal government and the Homeland Security Agency, have been notified of this Intell from Mexico, as well as other United States Federal agencies.
Going back over the border tonight... somethings in the works..... Border Patrol is on HIGH ALERT!