At least 17 Mexican police officers were killed yesterday in ambushes by an unidentified criminal gang in two different locations in the state of Mexico, about 80 kilometers from Mexico City. Official sources reported that the first episode took place in the municipality of Coatepec Harinas, when elements of the state police and investigative police officers of the local prosecutor’s office were ambushed in the area known as Llano Grande.
The police and justice, it was also learned, were patrolling the area responding to a complaint of the presence of one or more organized crime gangs. The group was suddenly attacked by an unknown number of armed men, with a death toll of 13: eight members of the state police and five judicial officers. Shortly after, another similar incident occurred, apparently involving the same criminal gang that acted in Coatepec Harinas, this time in the town of Almoloya de Alquisiras.
Also in this case the policemen got the worst of it, reporting four deaths. In the following hours, several Mexican security forces, with the support of elements of the National Guard, the Navy and the Army arrived on the spot to try to locate and capture the attackers. It was one of the worst attacks in Mexico against law enforcement in recent years. More serious than that of April 15, 2015, when 15 policemen were killed by gunmen belonging to the drug trafficking cartel ‘Jalisco Nueva Generación’ in the municipality of San Sebastián del Oeste, western state of Jalisco.
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