MEXICO CITY (AP) — A coordinated series of roadway bomb blasts in western Mexico that officials said were a trap organized by a drug cartel killed six police officers and prosecutors’ agents, the latest example of the increasingly open, military-style challenge posed by the country’s drug cartels.
The governor of Jalisco state said the blasts late Tuesday in Tlajomulco, a city near the state capital, Guadalajara, were set up by an anonymous caller who gave a volunteer search group a tip about a supposed clandestine burial site near the roadway. The bombs also wounded 12 people.
For years, police have been unable to locate the more than 110,000 missing people in Mexico, but they accompany volunteer search groups that look for such hidden graves. The volunteers, usually the mothers of missing people, often get anonymous tips about where their relatives may be buried.
Jalisco Gov. Enrique Alfaro said a total of eight “improvised explosive devices” were planted on the roadway, seven of which detonated simultaneously as a police convoy passed by.
“This is a brutal terror attack,” Alfaro said at a news conference Wednesday, blaming the deaths on an unnamed drug cartel. He said he was temporarily suspending police escorts for volunteer searches for the safety of the civilians.
Hector Flores, a leader of one of the search groups in Jalisco, said it did not appear that any search volunteers were in the blown up convoy.
