Mexican drug cartel leader Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villareal, a top kingpin and, one of the three leaders of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel, was killed during a gunbattle with soldiers Thursday.
Nacho Coronel is considered as the founder of the country’s massive methamphetamine trade. He was killed during a gunfight near the city of Guadalajara. This is the biggest strike against the Sinaloa cartel which is led by Joaquin (El Chapo) Guzman and this could mean more violence as factions fight for the cocaine and methamphetamine empire that the founder left behind.
Coronel was the No. 3 of the gang led by El Chapo who is also a Mexico’s most wanted drug lord. The major hit to one of the world’s most powerful drug cartel is the latest since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against drug traffickers is late 2006.
Coronel, who had a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head was believed to be the “forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the U.S.” according to the FBI.
The 56-year-old Coronel, controlled meth and cocaine trafficking routes that was said to extend from Mexico’s Pacific Coast and inland up to Arizona.
An army raid was closing in one of Coronel’s safehouses in an upscale suburb of the Western City of Guadalajara, when the drug lord opened fire on soldiers.
“Nacho Coronel tried to escape and fired on military personnel, killing on soldier and wounding another,” Villegas said at a news conference in Mexico City. “Responding to the attacks, this Capo died.”
Coronel’s downfall came amid persistent allegations that Calderon’s administration appeared to be favouring the Sinaloa Cartel, or not hitting it as hard as other drug gangs.
The army operation happened as it challenges a long-held notion that the Mexican government officials were supporting the Sinaloa cartel to win the drug war.
After a month of intelligence work, the Mexican army zeroed in on Coronel at his mission in a ritzy suburb of Guadalajara.
“I absolutely believe that this will have an impact on… the Sinaloa federation’s capability to move their drugs, at least in the short term,” said Dave Gaddis, deputy chief of operations that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “They will require time to rebuild”
Category : World
38 bodies of dead people found at Monterrey in northern Mexico duping ground was found by authorities, the officials said Friday. They have found the remains in a series of pits that were scattered on a ground at a suspected drug-gang dumping site.
The bodies found at the site were too badly decomposed that authorities hardly came up for an immediate identification.
Photographs of the incident showed charred spots on the soil which suggests that some of the thirty-eight bodies may have been partially burned.
The local media said that investigators were using heavy equipment in order to search for more bodies at the rural site outside Mexico’s third-largest city.
Mexican army did not release any immediate information on how they have detected the site. The clandestine grave site, which was discovered on Thursday and where the thirty-eight bodies were found, was believed to have been used by drug gangs that operate in the area.
Officials still had to inspect three more pits to search for more bodies, according to Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza. He said that of the thirty eight bodies found so far, 36 are men and 2 are women. He also said that there were more heavy equipment that was being brought in too help search the ground and pits where they have found some remains.
Since the government of Mexico had launched an offensive against drug cartels in late 2006, it reached a number of nearly 25,000 people that were killed.
Cartel hit men have been known to make use of mass dumping sites for disposal areas for their victims. In late part of May, police authorities of Taxco, a tourist town in central Mexico, discovered 55 bodies in an abandoned silver mine.
Drug gangs introduced a new threat to Mexico’s drug war last week where they detonated their first successful car bomb. A federal police officer and two others were killed in the attack in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua’s largest city.
President Felipe Calderon praised the army’s role in the drug fight when he spoke at a military graduation ceremony Friday. He also called the drug cartels “the threat to the well-being and progress of Mexican families, and the greatest danger to the liberties that our country’s founder gave their lives to obtain for us.”