Sunday, August 26, 2012 |
Borderland Beat
Gunmen created narco blockades blocking highways throughout Guadalajara, Mexico's second biggest city. On Saturday vehicles were set on fire amid a surge in drug-war violence.
Though no official information has been released, information is flowing through Twitter and other social networks. Reports of large groups and convoys of heavily armed masked men were conducting shootings, blockades and terrorizing people throughout Jalisco.
Reports from: Guadalajara, Zapopan, Guzman, Tuxucca, Tlaquepaque, Tonila and Tlajomulco among other cities involved.
Police confirmed seven unauthorized roadblocks constructed with charred, smoldering cars and trucks within the Guadalajara city limits and 15 others in the surrounding Jalisco .
Six were reportedly killed on Saturday. others seriously wounded by gunfire, but no arrests had been made.
It has recently seen an upsurge in violence as Sinaloa Cartel gunmen battle rivals from the Zetas cartel, which is displacing older trafficking groups in many parts of Mexico.
Luis Carlos Najera, police chief for Jalisco state, told reporters"We don't know who is behind this operation," he said.
Guadalajara has not seen the level of drug cartel-related violence as other areas, but similar flaming roadblocks shook the city in early March as military forces successfully sought to arrest a prominent cartel leader.
Jalisco state has been a stronghold of the Sinaloa Cartel since the 1980s, when traffickers first started to use Mexico as a "trampoline" to bounce cocaine into the United States.