Community | September 03, 2009 | 54 comments

Gunmen kill 17 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico

source: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_DRUG_WAR_MEXICO?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=D...

Image
AwesomeJosh
Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center and shot 17 people dead in a northern Mexican border city, an official said.

The attackers on Wednesday broke down the door of El Aliviane center in Ciudad Juarez, lined up their victims against a wall and opened fire, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the regional prosecutors' office. At least five people were injured.

Authorities had no immediate suspects or information on the victims. Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, is Mexico's most violent city, with at least 1,400 people killed this year alone. Most of the homicides are tied to drug gang violence.

Dozens of sobbing relatives rushed to the center to find out if their loved ones were among the dead. Soldiers and federal agents patrolled the streets surrounding the center in the Bellavista neighborhood.

President Felipe Calderon sent thousands more troops and federal police to Ciudad Juarez earlier this year, but the surge has done little to stem the raging violence. The city is home to the Juarez drug cartel, which is battling other gangs for trafficking and dealing turf.

The government is struggling to revamp Ciudad Juarez's police force, which is plagued by corruption and the assassination of many of its officers. Other police have quit the force out of fear of being targeted.

The massacre capped a particularly bloody day in Mexico's relentless drug war.

Gunmen killed the No. 2 security official and three other people in Calderon's home state of Michoacan, where the government is locked in an intensifying battle with the ruthless La Familia cartel, blamed for a string of assassinations of police and soldiers.

Jose Manuel Revuelta, who was promoted less than two weeks ago to state deputy public safety director, is the highest-ranking government official killed in the wave of assassinations sweeping Michoacan, the cradle of La Familia drug cartel.

Attackers drove up alongside Revuelta as he headed home and opened fire, state Attorney General Jesus Montejano said.

Revuelta tried to speed away, but only made it a few blocks before he was intercepted by two vehicles. Six gunmen got out and sprayed Revuelta's car with bullets, killing him, two bodyguards and a truck driver caught in the crossfire, Montejano said.

An AP reporter at the scene saw the bodies of Revuelta and his bodyguards in the car, which had at least 15 bullet holes in the front windshield. Soldiers and federal police rushed to the site - just three blocks from the headquarters of the Michoacan Public Safety Department - and a helicopter circled overhead.

Soldiers and federal police have intensified their fight against La Familia since accusing the cartel of killing 18 federal agents and two soldiers last month. In the worst attack, 12 federal agents were slain and their tortured bodies piled along a roadside as a warning.

It was the boldest cartel attack yet on Mexico's government. Authorities said say La Familia was retaliating for the arrest of one of its top members...


:(
  1. groups:
    Community,   Current Tonight,   Picked for Current Tonight,   News_Featured,   4 more
  2. tags:
    Drugs,  Drug War,  Mexico,  Shooting,  6 more
  3.     
    |

54 comments // Gunmen kill 17 people at a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico

  • RuthRuthless
  • Reinso
    • 0
      Reinso  

    • Juarez ! mass producing weird sh*t from "ciudad" juarez killing of women for no reason at all to this kind of no sense homicides.

    • 2 years ago
  • MinneapolisMafia
  • CalgarC
  • sidewaysclyde
    • 0
      sidewaysclyde  

    • This is very sad. 1400 deaths this year? That's 155 deaths a month. My blessings to the families and good people trying to uphold and protect innocent people.

    • 2 years ago
  • Humdrum
  • jon78drummer
    • 0
      jon78drummer  

    • I live in El Paso, in fact i can see Juarez from where I'm sitting right now and its crazy to think that that's the most violent city in all of Mexico and it's so peaceful here.

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
  • TheOuroborus
    • 0
      TheOuroborus  

    • It's clear that US drug laws and prohibition are directly helping stir the flames south of the border. The violence is a repeat of our own history from the 1920's. That it's happening in Mexico to Mexicans and not Americans is the reason our government is dragging it's feet on reform and repeal.

      How many St. Valentine's Day Massacre's have to happen before authorities open their eyes to the real cause?

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • Yep! Why are the Herbs that heal so darn hard to get??Stop the war on the herbs.This kind of murder and living hell is over a plant I don't think so This is a war over Drugs That man has made from a plant that grows. A man has to Make a drug an Herb will grow on It's own...I have never gone to a Meth bush and picked me some fresh Meth I have gone to town and bought Meth from a man that was wrong but I screw up now and then Oh well life goes on back on topic any way dope is every where in every spape and form. Oh by the way I am almost A year clean of Meth I know what and how drugs are effecting the good"Ol U.S. I see it every day in the faces of My Friends and Famly what is Happen in mexico is not going Away over night. I see them at the piont Texas was A hundred and fifty years ago. But instead of Gold and Wiskey. Their Fights are over drugs and Money. They have more fire power than they did back then but so do the cowboys these days.To legallize the Herbs would help Know dout but it is going to take a better management of our funds and borders. We need to stop worrying So much about every one else and focus more on the Home Team. If This made sence to any one You need to go see a Phychiatrist Right Away....

    • 2 years ago
  • joaarias
    • 0
      joaarias  

    • I am more than sure that the clinic was targetted due to the new law that passed allowing possession of a small amount and letting the government go after the "big wigs". The new law would supposedly allow police to refer the "addicts" to rehab centers, so it's prob an F-U to the government..as long as WE here continue with our demand and the governments ignorance towards it, there is nothing that Mexico can do to help in the supposed drug war, plus we seem to inadverdently be the cartels' gun supplier as well (through regular people purchasing and smuggling them back) so it's a whole lot of bullshit going on..

    • 2 years ago
  • hunzedog
  • MinneapolisMafia
  • J_Jammer
  • trelk
    • 0
      trelk  

    • i remember hearing a special on npr's Hearing Voices show by silver tongued scott carrier about juarez. that place is crazy and we can't blame u.s. policy for what is going on there. if stalin or chairman mao were running things in mexico, not that i would wish that on them, there would be coffins lined up in the streets waiting for drug gang members. if there was a correct military response to the drug lords they would be smited...along with a fair amount of collateral damage i am sure. but what i heard on that show on npr it sounds like the military is paid off. can you imagine drug lords paying off castro? i can't.

    • 2 years ago
  • idealist
  • newamerica2012
  • hunzedog
  • J_Jammer
  • hunzedog
  • bailey78
  • spacemikey
    • 0
      spacemikey [removed]  

    • Mexico has some problems, if prohibition (in places other than Mexico) hadn't driven prices sky high and made these guys rich the situation wouldn't be the same. You can debate whose at fault all you want, users or laws, but that won't change the fact that America has seriously helped create this monster. And because the cartels are such monstrosities, simply decriminalizing in Mexico will only help a few weekend users stay out of legal trouble. You want to stop the violence in Mexico? change policies elsewhere, push the value of their product down, and help Mexico systematically dismantle their drug cartels....What we made them for Mexico to deal with and just leave innocents, and people not wanting to get caught up in it, stuck? We owe more to Mexico, than Afghanistan...

    • 2 years ago
  • biggranny
  • samthesixth
  • hunzedog
  • samthesixth
  • Rosenquartz
    • 0
      Rosenquartz  

    • It really is a shame that anyone lost their lives. The problem is, we could go into Mexico and get tied up in a long costly war with drug lords, but I don't think we should. The best way to to deal with this very serious problem is by offering help to people here in the US, instead of throwing drug users in jail help rehabilitate them, or even prevent them from needing to take rugs in the first place. Knowing they have a means of taking care of themselves could probably reduce the number of drug users dramatically.

    • 2 years ago
  • Maeveeo
  • J_Jammer
  • lj111
    • 0
      lj111  

    • a very good post. its a shame because these people were seeking help for their drug problems.. it appears that these killers were concern about these people doing this.

    • 2 years ago
  • bailey78
  • coleslaw
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  

    • That sucks and it's terrible that people are so violent.

      Guess the law change on drugs didn't solve much of the violent problem as people claimed it could.

      Give it time? Or do you mean to state give them more human sacrifices until the law actually does good?

    • 2 years ago
  • freshfish
    • 0
      freshfish  
    • J_Jammer:

      Actually the problems is that mexico is going about it all wrong, so is the medical marijuana movement in the U.S.
      . It will never be safe until they legalize drugs all together. Prohibition by its nature will always be run by violence until you bring the entire trade to a regulated environment it will never be even remotely controlled.

      Dont get me wrong i think cocaine heroin , meth crack all that poison is horrible but they are mostly a result of of users being so sick from withdrawal they will put anything in their body to remove the pain.

      I truly believe if they normalized cannabis altogether it would solve alot of this it is after all their cash crop. Cmon man a weed that sells for $350 an oz. . Its like we are just handing gold bars over to the cartels.

      Meanwhile the DEA sits around with its thumb up its ass busting citizen growers, who arent contributing to the cartels if they can help it. And who knows how much farmland in columbia we have poisoned to snuff out the growers there.
      Sorry for rant but these killings are happening everyday no more than ten miles from where i sleep and live. I think the Drug War is a little more real for me than you based on your naive statement.

    • 2 years ago
  • J_Jammer
    • 0
      J_Jammer [removed]  
    • J_Jammer:

      Naive would only be true if I were being serious. I mock because people make a big deal about legalization and when it happens and deaths still occur---it's funny because it didn't save those people.

      But then again laws don't make people terrible, they tend to be able to do that all on their own.

      And legalization is paradisaic sounding, but has no backing to actually working and solving all our legal woes and death woes and problems with crime woes.

      I think this can simply be solved by decrminlizing drugs almost as whole.

      Make them work in community service...don't send them to jail.

      it's not all or nothing...that's naive.

    • 2 years ago
  • jswiz
    • 0
      jswiz  
    • J_Jammer:

      changging the laws in mexico is not going to help its changging the laws the U.S. that would help,the america people want drugs and so the mexican's supply sences its is illeagal in the U.S and on the hand GUNS are illeagal in mexico but they need guns to get the drugs over to the U.S its reaffer madness.

    • 2 years ago
  • fun_size
    • 0
      fun_size  
    • J_Jammer:

      Legalizing drugs in Mexico will probably have a small effect on the mexican cartels but not as much as say legalizing drugs in the US. Also its been what 2 weeks since mexico legalized drugs in small doses? Give it some time.

    • 2 years ago
  • timlfrench
  • stephenthomson
  • atainder
  • newamerica2012
  • idealist
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  
    • atainder:

      YeaMan homegrown getya real stone like to the bone stone so you can't get back home you so stone on the home grown like puddin on the couch stone they knock on the door but you can't get your ass off the couch stone that is what the home grown stone to the bone is Piss the Man Off grow yo own

    • 2 years ago
  • idealist
  • eldamon
  • PhilistineTheArtLuvr
  • idealist
  • Mobius2012
  • idealist
  • trelk
  • jubal
  • idealist
  • Mobius2012
  • jubal
    • 0
      jubal  
    • idealist:

      Mobius, not at all, I don't think death is a funny thing at all. But you must admit that there is a certain irony in this strategy of intimidation against those in recovery.

    • 2 years ago
more from Community:
from the community

top videos