Gunfight kills 42 cartel members in Mexico

[Still Waters]

Mexican federal forces have killed at least 42 suspected cartel members during a three-hour gunfight on a ranch in a violence-torn western region, marking one of the drug war's bloodiest battles.

Only one federal police officer was killed in the operation on Friday, which authorities launched after learning that 'armed criminals' were occupying the ranch in Tanhuato, Michoacan state, near the neighbouring state of Jalisco, officials said.

http://www.skynews.c...-in-mexico.html

[aztek]

Tanhuato de Guerrero (Mexico) (AFP) - Puddles of blood and bullet shells are some of the remnants of an intense gunfight on a western Mexico ranch that killed 42 criminal suspects and one police officer.

But experts are raising questions about what really happened at the El Sol ranch in western Mexico on Friday, nearly a year after soldiers were accused of executing gang suspects following a similarly lopsided toll.

The gunfight with suspected henchmen of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel occurred in a region considered a bastion of the gang, which has killed 28 police officers and soldiers since March

"It was a very uneven fight. A battle where 42 die on one side and only one on the other is not a battle," said Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

"There are still a lot of doubts. The number of weapons seized doesn't match the number of dead and detained."

"They have to demonstrate that this was not another Tlatlaya," he said, referring to the municipality in central Mexico where soldiers killed 22 gang suspects in June 2014 in what officials initially described as a shootout.

Only one soldier was wounded. Prosecutors later charged three soldiers with murdering eight of the suspects after they surrendered.

http://news.yahoo.com/one-sided-death-toll-mexico-gunfight-raises-doubts-211615483.html