EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Police in Juarez, Mexico, report the arrest of eight individuals in connection with a two-day spate of violence that left 22 people dead.
The killings began on Wednesday and included rare home invasions in which residents, including women, were targeted. The attacks picked up on Thursday, with 11 of 13 victims killed within a three-hour period starting at 8 a.m., police said.
The body of a man wrapped in a blanket was left on a street in the San Isidro neighborhood of southeast Juarez. Two men were shot dead inside a house in the Aztecas neighborhood 15 minutes later. Gunmen murdered a woman coming out of her home in the Granjas neighborhood of South Juarez around the same time.
The violence wound down by noon. An hour later the Municipal Public Safety Secretary issued a statement saying eight people were in custody in connection with some of the shootings. No more murders had been reported as of 5 p.m. Thursday.
“The arrest of these eight men, ages 23 to 35, and the seizure of two pistols were made as a result of a citywide operation,” the statement from the municipal police said. “This joint operation including security agencies from the three levels of government continues.”
City, state and federal police officials did not volunteer an explanation for the violence. But police officers and state investigators at various crime scenes told Border Report news partner ProVideo initial inquiries pointed to gang-on-gang attacks.
The violence comes just over a week after Chihuahua state authorities transferred 120 members of the Doblados or Artistas Asesinos gangs from Cereso No. 3 prison in Juarez to the interior of the state.
Some investigators told ProVideo the attacks of the past two days may be related to the transfer and came in areas where Doblados previously had influence.
Juarez Mayor Cruz Perez Cuellar on Thursday afternoon told reporters the killings “were the result of a struggle over crystal sales.”
Crystal, or crystal methamphetamine, in the past few years has been aggressively peddled in Juarez by drug cartels looking to grow an in-house market in Juarez in addition to exporting drugs to the United States. The mayor emphasized that the violence did not touch “ordinary people.”
ProVideo in Juarez, Mexico contributed to this report.
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