Mexico City (AP) — Mexico City police engaged in a shooting battle with more than 12 gunmen armed with .50 caliber sniper rifles, grenades, and machine guns on Tuesday, officials said.
City police chief Omar Garcia Harfuch said four police officers were injured and one was seriously injured.
He said a total of 150 officers, soldiers and three helicopters participated in the operation. The operation came after locals reported that armed men were detaining people abducted in the area.
Garcia Harfuch said 14 suspects had been detained and police had released two kidnapped victims who were allegedly detained against their will. He added that “a significant amount of drugs” were also found near an abandoned restaurant that the gang believed to have used as a safe home.
The shootout took place in Topirejo, a town on the southern tip of the city’s countryside. The pine-covered mountains on the southern edge of the city have long been used by kidnappers and other criminals as a hideout.
According to the police chief, the shooter fired at police as he passed a safe house on the highway leading to the nearby city of Cuernavaca.
He said the militants appeared to have worked in Mexico’s most economically powerful gangster, the Sinaloa Cartel, and were not kidnapped for ransom purposes.
Garcia Harfuch does not disagree with the fact that major drug gangs are active in Mexico City.
In 2020, before dawn on one of the capital’s main boulevards, an armed group of about 20 people ambushed Garcia Halfoff’s armored vehicles. A brave attack killed him three bullet wounds and his two bodyguards and his bystanders.
The police chief blamed the attack on the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.