13 alleged drug cartel members killed in shootout with police in Mexico

Thirteen suspected members of a drug cartel were killed Monday in a shootout with authorities in the troubled Mexican state of Sinaloa, officials said.

Four other suspects were arrested and nine people kidnapped by the gang were released after the clash in Guasave, a municipality in the northwestern state, Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said in a social media post.

He said security personnel on patrol were attacked by armed men hiding under a bridge, prompting officers to respond.

After the shooting, law enforcement officials also seized seven vehicles, high-powered weapons and tactical equipment, García Harfuch said.

Sinaloa has been rocked for more than a year by a conflict between factions of a powerful local cartel. The violence has left at least 1,700 people dead, 57 of them minors, and nearly 2,000 missing.

the poster internal The war began after the capture of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadathe historical leader of the group, who was betrayed and taken to the United States in July 2024 by a son of his former partner, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Following their arrests and accusations of Zambada’s kidnapping, horrible fighting broke out in Mexico between a faction of the cartel loyal to him and another linked to the “Chapitos”, Guzmán’s children.

Los Chapitos have used corkscrews and electrocution to torture your rivals while some of his victims were “fed alive or dead to tigers,” according to an indictment published by the United States Department of Justice.

In recent months, bodies have turned up all over Sinaloa, often abandoned in the streets or in cars with hats on their heads or pizza slices or boxes stabbed with knives. Pizzas and hats have become informal symbols of warring cartel factions, underscoring the brutality of their war.

Last week, authorities said El Chapo’s hometown was hit in attacks by drones loaded with explosives.

El Chapo was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and is serving time in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. In 2023, the leader of the cartel sent an “SOS” through his lawyers to then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador to ask for help due to the alleged “psychological torment” that he says he suffered in prison.