Gunbattle kills 43 in west Mexico cartel territory

ECUANDUREO, Mexico – The latest in a series of clashes between Mexican authorities and a powerful, fast-growing drug cartel turned into the deadliest confrontation in recent memory, with 42 suspected gang gunmen and one Federal Police officer killed during a three-hour firefight at a remote western ranch.

The battle on Friday followed two other recent unprecedented attacks by the cartel, one that killed 15 state police officers and another that shot down an army helicopter with a rocket launcher for the first time in Mexico’s history. The death toll from all three is at least 76 people at a time when the Mexican government claims crime is falling dramatically and the interior minister recently insisted the country “is not in flames.”

Black smoke billowing upward from vehicles set on fire during Friday’s fighting in the municipality of Tanhauto on the border between Jalisco and Michoacan states could be seen for miles.

Photographs from the scene showed bodies, some with semi-automatic rifles and others without weapons, lying in fields, next to farm equipment and on a blood-stained patio strewn with clothes, mattresses and sleeping bags. Video obtained by the Associated Press showed federal police officers coming under fire and bodies strewn throughout the ranch.

The suspects were members of “a criminal organization whose main operating zone is Jalisco state,” National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubido said. He did not specify the Jalisco New Generation cartel, but the drug gang dominates the area where the battle erupted and has grown rapidly in recent years to become one of Mexico’s biggest organized crime groups.

The gunbattle started when soldiers, federal police and investigators were checking out a report that armed men had suddenly appeared on a ranch, Rubido said. Federal forces on the way to the ranch met a truck full of armed men who opened fire, and when the government force chased the gunmen onto the ranch, they came under heavy fire from others, the security chief said.