Tuesday 30 October 2012

Fourteen killed around Mexico

Fourteen people including five women and a teenager were killed around Mexico on 29 October in incidents mostly thought related to organized crime, Proceso reported. The dead included a woman gunned down outside a supermarket in Guachochi in the northern state of Chihuahua, in a scene likely seen by her three-year-old son who was sitting in a car nearby. Two women and a 13-year-old boy were gunned down in a beer shop in Guadalupe near the northern city of Monterrey. Soldiers also shot dead a gunman as they took over a ranch in the western state of Michoacán thought to belong to a presumed leader of the criminal gang Caballeros Templarios, Enrique Plancarte Solís or Kiki. Suspected gang members fled the estate, where an unspecified amount of arms and cash was found. In the west-coast resort of Acapulco, four or more armed men apparently sought to burn down a hotel after they entered pretending to be guests, Proceso reported on 29 October. Two entered the kitchens of the Costa Linda hotel on the coastal Miguel Alemán boulevard and started a fire with fuel, before the group fled. Staff put out the fire.

FARC attack kills six policemen in Colombia

Suspected members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) attacked a police post in western Colombia on 29 October, killing six members of the highway police, media reported. The attack with gunfire and explosives took place on a road between the districts of Puerto Tejada and Villarica in the north of the Cauca department, and was suspected to be the work of the FARC's Sixth Front, El Colombiano reported on 30 October.