Mexican authorities raised the death toll to 17 on Monday in an attack on a state prison in Ciudad Juarez, on the border with El Paso, Texas, in an operation that seemed designed to free the leader of a local gang. Twenty-five inmates escaped after the attack.
Two other people were killed in the city during a chase with local police in what authorities considered a possible diversion just before the attack on the jail began.
Rosa Icela Rodriguez, Secretary of Security, said that 10 of the dead were prison guards attacked by armed men who arrived early Sunday in armored vehicles and shot both at the prison entrance and inside some of the dormitories.
Rodriguez identified the inmates who escaped as members of the Mexicles gang, which he associated with the Caborca cartel, a criminal group led by drug trafficker Rafael Caro Quintero, recaptured in July and requested in extradition by the United States.
Among the fugitives was the leader of the Mexicles, added the official. Another 15 people were injured, including a guard.
The authorities managed to subsequently arrest five of the alleged participants in the evasion.
Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval explained that the soldiers and state police who retook control of the prison found 10 “VIP” cells equipped with televisions and other amenities. In one of them there was even a safe full of money.
Authorities also found cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, fentanyl, and marijuana inside the jail.
In August, a riot inside the same state prison, which holds almost 4,000 inmates, spread to the streets of Juarez with violence that left 11 dead.
In that case, two inmates were killed inside the prison, and then suspected gang members began shooting the city, including killing four employees of a radio station who were doing a restaurant promotion.
Violence is frequent in Mexican prisons. Clashes regularly break out between inmates from rival gangs who, in places like Juarez, act as cells of the big drug cartels.
Source: El Nuevo Herald
