Armed group ambushes and kills 13 police officers in Mexico

MEXICO CITY - An armed group ambushed and killed more than a dozen law enforcement officers, including a local security secretary and a police chief, in south-western Mexico on Monday.

This adds to a soaring number of deadly attacks against the police in the region.

The slaughter in Coyuca de Benitez, in the state of Guerrero, left 13 security officials dead, including the municipality’s security secretary, Mr Alfredo Alonso Lopez, and the director of municipal police, Mr Honorio Salinas Garay, according to a spokesperson for the Guerrero state prosecutor’s office.

Guerrero is now the second most dangerous state in Mexico for law enforcement officers, with more than 34 killed in 2023, according to Common Cause, a Mexico-based organisation tracking the killings of police officers in the country.

The group said more than 340 police officers had been killed in the nation in 2023, and more than 400 killed in 2022.

“We demand justice and zero impunity,” Common Cause said in a statement.

While President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office promising to make Mexico safer, he has downplayed the

violence in the nation

and blamed the problem on his predecessors.

But the clashes between rival drug organisations have prompted criticism, including from the United States.

Mr Lopez Obrador has said much of the violence is because of inability by the US to prevent guns from being trafficked south into Mexico.

Leaders from both countries discussed the roots of such violence during high-profile meetings in Mexico City in October.

Guerrero, a state plagued by turf wars between drug cartel organisations, has particularly been dangerous for law enforcement officers.

Mr Alonso Lopez’s predecessor as security secretary in Coyuca de Benitez, Mr David Borja Padilla, survived an assassination attempt in December 2022.

The violence in recent years can be traced to rival drug cartels competing for territory in the state, which includes the tourist area of Acapulco, as well as a mountainous environment used for growing marijuana and opium poppy, according to Mr Eduardo Guerrero, a Mexico-based intelligence consultant who works with local governments in the country.

He said some of the criminals in the area targeted law enforcement after the federal government built a new military facility in the state in 2022.

“We have attacks every week,” Mr Guerrero said of the drug cartels, which appear to “specialise in killing police officers”.

The targeting of security officials has become common in Tierra Caliente, a region shared by Guerrero, Michoacan and the state of Mexico, where conflicts between rival cartels have caused violence to surge.

Two prosecutors in Guerrero were killed just days apart in September.

A drug gang shot to death 20 people, including a mayor and his father, in the mountains of Guerrero in October 2022.

In March 2021, gunmen ambushed and massacred 13 law enforcement officers in Mexico state.

Mr Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez Mendoza, Guerrero’s vice-prosecutor of investigations, said in a video message that security officials in Coyuca de Benitez had not approached state authorities to report threats made against them.

He added that the prosecutor’s office was investigating the killings.

“This prosecutor’s office commits itself to carry out all acts of investigation, both in the field and in the office, as well as intelligence actions, in order to clarify the facts,” he said. NYTIMES