(News Terupdate) - A noon shootout left six police officers and a civilian dead on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday, city officials said.
Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said five of the dead were federal police officers and one was a female city officer, all part of the joint police task force formed to combat drug violence in the border town.
Another federal officer was gravely wounded, Reyes said, and a city officer was wounded but not with life-threatening injuries.
A civilian was hit by shrapnel but those injuries were also not serious, he added.
Reyes said the incident began when two patrol cars, one from federal police and one from city police, stopped several people they had been investigating.
Gunmen in three other cars attacked the police convoy with a variety of weapons, including AK-47s, he said, based on bullets and shell casings found on the scene.
The gunmen, who escaped in a gray Dodge Durango and a green Dodge Caravan, may have been drug dealers, Federal Police said. The attack may have been in response to several recent arrests in Juarez, including eight people apprehended Thursday for possession of weapons, drugs and a stolen van, the agency said.
The mayor said it wasn't immediately clear why the police had stopped the people or whether the incident was drug related. Investigators are treating the incident "as a direct attack on police officers," he said.
Federal police launched an aerial search for the gunmen's vehicles but there have been no arrests.
Reyes said at a meeting with federal police that he was ordering an increase of patrol cars so there will be three or four cars per location.
About 800 cars patrol the city, Reyes said. The city police force consists of 3,000 officers, bolstered by 5,000 federal officers.
Source : CNN
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
6 police, 1 civilian dead in Juarez shootout
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