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750 members of a Mexican drug- trafficking cartel were arrested during a 21-month operation by US, Mexican and Canadian police, the US Justice Department said Wednesday. The department said it had dealt a 'crushing blow' to the Sineloa cartel, also known as the Federation and one of the biggest drug gangs in Mexico. 'International drug trafficking organizations pose a sustained, serious threat to international safety and security,' said US Attorney General Eric Holder in a press conference. 'They are a national security threat.' The Justice Department said the 21-month operation led to more than 750 arrests, some 70 networks across the US had been shut down, 12,000 kilograms of cocaine and 150 weapons were seized and about 1 billion dollars in revenue had been denied the cartel as a result. Holder said there was an 'ongoing effort' in Mexico and the United States but that the operation, led by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, had severely restricted the c...

Bodies of a retired Mexican brigadier general and two other men were found Tuesday in a sport utility vehicle abandoned on a highway outside of Cancun, the resort's mayor said. All had been shot many times.Mayor Gregorio Sanchez identified the victims as retired army Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, his assistant Tulio Cesar Roman, an active-duty infantry lieutenant, and civilian Juan Ramirez.Tello had been working as a security consultant to the local government when he was killed.There was speculation that the slayings were intended as a warning to Cancun officials, some of whom have sought to rid the popular beach resort of drug traffickers and other gangsters.Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 people were reported killed between Monday night and late Tuesday afternoon in the border state of Chihuahua. Most of the dead were found in Ciudad Juarez.In one incident, a man and a woman were gunned down in a supermarket parking lot and a third person was killed in the checkout line. Officials sai...

Hooded gunmen believed engaged in a drugs feud burst into a bar in northern Mexico and shot dead 11 people in the third drugs-related massacre in the state since July, officials said.The black-clad gunmen opened fire with assault rifles at the Rio Rosas bar in Chihuahua city near Texas on Thursday night after pushing their way in and identifying themselves as federal police, the Chihuahua attorney general's office said.The killings were believed related to a feud between gangs jockeying over drug smuggling routes into the United States.Customers stampeded out of the bar as the gunmen fled the usually quiet city neighbourhood. One of the victims was a columnist for the city's main daily newspaper.A few hours later, federal police fought a group of suspected hitmen in a gun battle on the highway south from Ciudad Juarez, which is on the U.S. border, to Chihuahua.Police declined to say if the battle, in which two policemen and two gunmen died, involved the men who attacked the bar...

Second division club Mapaches de Nueva Italia, based in the western state of Michoacan, could be financed by the ruthless Gulf cartel from the Gulf of Mexico or by an emerging gang called The Family, possibly for money laundering purposes. "We have made seven arrests of club directors and players, all Mapaches," said a federal official who declined to be named. The arrests followed a police raid on the team after a game in Mexico City. The official declined to give more details about the investigation but Michoacan state has been at the center of Mexico's gruesome drug war as rival cartels fight over smuggling routes for cocaine and marijuana and the army tries to stop spiraling violence.In September, drug gangs threw grenades into the central square of Michoacan's capital Morelia as revelers celebrated Independence Day, the first major strike by drug cartels on the public.

Bodies are cut up and dumped in acid. Victims are stripped naked and hung from bridges. Others have their tongues cut out before being murdered -- Mexican gangs are using horrifying methods to outdo each other in an already harrowing drugs war. Drug cartel hitmen have massacred some 70 people in the past 10 days in Tijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border, once a freewheeling city serving Americans tequila, cheap medicines and sex that is being devastated by the war.Mexico's government says most of the recent victims belonged to Tijuana's Arellano Felix family cartel that won notoriety in the 1990s for smuggling tons of cocaine into California and for its ruthless elimination of enemies.But it has been weakened in recent years with former leaders killed or arrested, and other cartels are moving in to take control of the drugs trade in Tijuana and throughout the border state of Baja California. "The Arellano Felix cartel no longer has control of drug trafficking in Tijuana, rival ...

Surenos means "southerner," Eways said. The term is often used in California prisons to refer to any gang member from southern California, he said. And No. 13 represents the letter M — the 13th letter of the alphabet — which symbolizes the gang members' alliances to the Mexican mafia, Eways said.increase in arrests of alleged members of the gang Surenos 13 may represent the gang's increasing reach, or it may result from better classification of those arrested, authorities and academics said. The gang is distinct from the larger and better-known MS-13, but police or federal agents may have lumped them together during previous roundups.Over the course of a four-month effort that ended Tuesday, officials arrested 1,759 people in 28 states, 33 percent more than they arrested during a similar campaign last year. Of those, 1,315 were gang members and gang associates, and 338 belonged to Surenos 13, according to figures released Wednesday by federal Immigration and Customs E...

Mexican police said on Friday they have found the bodies of 24 men who were bound and shot to death execution-style outside the capital.The bodies found Friday represent one of the largest single mass executions in Mexico in recent memory. Police and soldiers were at the scene of the crime in a rural area just west of Mexico City, which has been marked by gangland slayings and land disputes between farming communities.The killings are "without doubt" linked to organized crime, said Alberto Bazbaz, the attorney general of Mexico State, which borders Mexico City. "The only thing we have to identify them is that they all appear to be between 20 and 35, all of them have military-style haircuts, and they were wearing clothing appropriate for a warm climate," Bazbaz told the television network Televisa. The mountains around Mexico City are colder, and Bazbaz said it was likely they were from the warmer, drug-plagued neighboring states of Michoacan or Guerrero. In a statem...

Two bodies were found Monday morning on a hillside, one with its head placed on its upper back.The gruesome discoveries this week of five bodies, four of them decapitated, have shattered a period of relative calm and revived concerns that organized crime groups are escalating their battle for control of this border city.Three more bodies were discovered Tuesday morning in an illegal dump. Their heads, charred from gasoline burns, were placed at their feet, according to the Baja California state attorney general's office.Authorities have not identified the victims.The attacks recalled the decapitations two years ago of three Rosarito Beach police officers.Authorities believe the recent victims may have been associates of the reputed leader of the Arellano Felix drug cartel, Fernando Sanchez Arellano, nicknamed El Ingeniero -- The Engineer. Printed on the shirtless victims' backs was a taunting message: "We are people of the weakened engineer."Violence had declined sign...

Five-time Mexican supercross champion was brutally murdered in his home by a biker gang on Monday.Rene Tercero Reyes Aguirre was shot by an armed gang who broke into his home in Juarez, Mexico.Two friends of the 24 year old rider were also murdered in the attack, which followed a series of violent gang-related attacks in the town on Monday that left a total of 11 people dead.The violence raged on into Tuesday, when a further three people were killed.

Shootout between rival drug gangs in Sinaloa, Mexico, leaves trail of war behind. Shootout between alleged rival drug gangs set vehicles ablaze and damage houses as they battle for turf.Two groups of alleged drug traffickers were involved in a shootout at dawn in the northern city of Culiacan in the state of Sinaloa on Monday (July 14) where they set ablaze three vehicles and damaged four houses, according to authorities.There were no reports of injuries, deaths or arrests and the state attorney general's office said it was too early to report how many weapons or if drugs had been seized.As Federal Sinaloa Deputy, Daniel Amador Gaxiola stated, "We are living through the most difficult stages of modern history, if you can call it that. We regret what is happening in Sinaloa and people live in fear and uncertainty. However we have to recognize efforts being carried out by the government are trying to create results. Unfortunately, it's a problem that is out of our reach, of ...

Six people were shot and killed inside a private law office in central Mexico, state prosecutors said.Five men and a women died in yesterday's attack in the western city of Guadalajara, the Jalisco state attorney-general's office said in a statement. Two women survived the shooting, the statement said. Mexico City newspaper El Universal reported they were seriously wounded. The bodies were found in different parts of the office, and some of the victims' hands were tied, the statement said. The gunshot wounds appeared to come from a 9mm weapon. No arrests had been made. In recent years, Mexico has suffered a wave of organised crime and drug-related violence that killed more than 2,500 people last year alone. It was not immediately clear if any of the lawyers at the office had clients with links to organised crime.

Alleged Memphis drug lord and half-brother to Three 6 Mafia's DJ Paul is facing 56 charges in federal court after being arrested early this month in Mexico, while appearing in the top 15 of America's Most Wanted fugitives. A nearly 70-page indictment was handed down to 31-year-old Craig Petties this week, detailing his alleged drug operation which is estimated to have run from 1995 up until this year. The superseding indictment follows a 40-page one laid against him originally in 2002 before he went on the run. Petties -- in addition to conspiracy to distribute marijuana and cocaine from the original indictment -- now faces several other charges including conspiracy to commit murder for hire, money laundering and racketeering. Authorities have learned, since 2002, that Petties' organization allegedly attempted to kill people who interfered with their drug trafficking business. As far as money laundering charges, the indictment says that Petties used drug money to pay for se...

Jose Luis Santiago, the point man in the country's war on drug gangs and the official in charge of extraditing drug bosses to the United States, said the suspected hit men may belong to the Sinaloa Cartel, which dominates Mexico's Pacific Coast cocaine smuggling routes. Mexico's deputy attorney general said on Thursday that three men arrested in Mexico City last week with shoulder-fired rockets, rifles and a submachine gun were planning to kill him. "It's one of the risks run by all of us who are committed," Santiago was quoted as saying in the daily Reforma newspaper's online edition. Police stopped a car in an upscale neighborhood during a late-night check last Thursday and found the men and the weapons. Santiago said an investigation indicated they were on their way to ambush him. President Felipe Calderon has sent more than 25,000 federal police and soldiers to hunt down drug cartels near the U.S. border and in other troubled areas around Mexico, which...