EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The mayor of a town in southern Chihuahua urged residents to stay inside their homes amid reports of automatic gunfire and men dressed in black walking through the town and firing weapons.
“We are going through a wave of violence in which the population is being affected,” Ana Laura Gonzalez Abrego, mayor of the town of Guadalupe y Calvo, said in an emergency broadcast on social media this past weekend. “I have not left, I am here safeguarded in my home like the rest of you. Let’s try not to go out, stay safe inside our homes, take care of our lives.”
Gonzalez went on to say she called the Mexican National Guard and that Guard members were stationed outside her home.
The statement came as videos shared on social media show men in black shouting “La Linea!” apparently looking for rifles and firing rifles in the air. Multiple shots ring out in another video panning across the mountains that characterize the town in southern Chihuahua state.
Headlines about the incident on influential Mexican news outlets referred to the incident as La Linea having “taken” the town.
On Sunday, the National Guard made a show of force around public buildings. On Monday, state police Chief of Staff Luis Aguirre said a multi-agency operation was in place to guarantee the safety of residents and free transit on highways in southern Chihuahua.
“There were incidents of gun shots over the weekend, but it was handled by the authorities. They remain there,” Aguirre said during a news conference broadcast on Facebook Live. “It was addressed since we heard the first reports of shots.”
Pressed further by reporters, Aguirre said two men dressed in camouflage “characteristic of people linked to organized crime” were killed during a confrontation. “However, we don’t have reports of damage to infrastructure, to public buildings, homes or residents’ vehicles. It is a situation taking place in the outskirts of the municipality.”
No arrests have been reported.
Aguirre also said state police and soldiers in the area previously had been “monitored” by cartel drones and attacks on public servants had been attempted using drones with explosives.
The mountainous southern Chihuahua region and the highways bringing traffic across northern Mexico from Sinaloa to Coahuila and Nuevo Leon have been violently disputed by the Sinaloa cartel and local groups like La Linea – formerly the Juarez cartel – for several years.
Analysts say the region is increasingly experiencing violent encounters between members of the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, with some gunfights lasting up to five hours.
Guadalupe y Calvo is about 530 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
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