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Mexico: 13 Killed in Shootout Near US Border

10 May 2011 03:55 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Mexico’s navy says 13 people, including one marine, have been killed in a shootout involving the security forces and suspected members of the Zetas drug gang, APA reports quoting â€œThe Voice of Americaâ€.
Officials Monday said Mexican marines were patrolling Falcon Lake, which straddles the border with Texas, when they discovered a suspected drug camp on an island and the gunfire erupted. Authorities seized around 20 weapons after the shootout.
Falcon Lake is where U.S. citizen David Hartley was reportedly chased and shot dead in late September. His body has never been found. Hartley’s wife, Tiffany, has said the two were riding on jet skis when they were attacked by men she believed were pirates. Hartley said she escaped but that her husband was shot in the head.
The case took a gruesome turn when a Mexican police commander investigating the reported shooting was later beheaded. U.S. and Mexican authorities say the severed head of Rolando Flores Villegas was placed in a suitcase and dumped near a Mexican army post in Miguel Aleman, Mexico.
Drug cartels in Mexico have used beheadings in the past to threaten the country’s law enforcement personnel.
The Zetas began as a Mexican military unit that defected and began working with the Gulf cartel, based in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from the U.S. city of El Paso, Texas. The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel last year. The two groups are now fierce rivals.
More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and began cracking down on the nation’s cartels.