Girl, 8, and mother killed in resort gun terror
A drugs-war gun battle erupted on the main coast boulevard in the heart of Mexico’s tourist mecca Acapulco, killing six people, including an eight-year-old girl and her mother.
A police officer died in yesterday’s shootout but at least three of the other victims seemed to have been caught in the crossfire at a junction in the Pacific resort.
Five other people were wounded and about a dozen vehicles were riddled with bullets.
Police said today they had arrested a 26-year-old man who apparently worked for Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a US-born drug boss who has been engaged in a bloody battle in the Acapulco area with former colleagues in the Beltran-Leyva cartel.
Police said the gun battle started when “armed men travelling in several vehicles opened fire on the occupants of another vehicle”, killing both men. It was unclear why the men were targeted.
Police tried to intercept the gunmen’s vehicles and “in their attempt to escape, the assailants opened fire on several private vehicles, killing three people, including a child,” federal police said.
The area was littered with hundreds of shell casings from AK-47 assault rifles - a weapon used almost exclusively by Mexico’s drug cartels.
The battle caused a huge traffic jam on the busy Miguel Aleman Boulevard after some drivers crashed into each other and others tried to cross the palm-lined central reservation in a desperate attempt to flee the shooting.
The Acapulco area has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Zetas drug gang and the Beltran-Leyva cartel, which has been riven by additional internal disputes.
“An eight-year-old girl died when she was being transferred in an ambulance and her mother also died,” city police said.
A policeman at the scene said the mother had just picked her daughter up from school when they were caught in the hail of bullets.
The junction where the shooting occurred marks the start of a strip where high-rise hotels alternate with open strips of beach and is among the city’s most heavily travelled and best-known areas.
Meanwhile the Mexican army said two soldiers and two gunmen died in another shootout in a northern area that has seen a recent increase in drug violence.
The army said soldiers patrolling in the border state of Nuevo Leon chased six suspicious cars that crossed into neighbouring Tamaulipas state, where a gun battle took place in the town of Comales.
Three soldiers and several gunmen were wounded in the clash on Tuesday. The army said 200 soldiers and two helicopters were sent to the area to hunt for the attackers.
The north-eastern states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, across from Texas, have seen a surge of violence in recent weeks that authorities blame on a fight between the Gulf cartel and the Zetas.
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