Yuri Cortez, AFP file picture | Mexican forces patrol outside the attorney’s office where an investigation into the Zeta cartel is ongoing

Federal forces on Wednesday arrested the leader of one of Mexico’s most feared drug cartels in a pre-dawn raid in the northern city of Monterrey, officials said. The arrest marks the second capture of a Mexican drug kingpin in less than a week.

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Omar Trevino Morales, who took the helm of the Zetas cartel after his brother was arrested in July 2013, was detained in the early hours of Wednesday in San Pedro Garza Garcia, a suburb of the industrial city of Monterrey, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

The Mexican government had offered a 30-million peso (€1.8 million) reward for his capture on weapons and organised crime charges.

His arrest comes just days after the capture of Servando Gomez, leader of the Knights Templar drug gang, who was the most wanted capo still at large in Mexico.

The Zetas have been blamed for many of the bloodiest atrocities carried out by Mexican gangs in a wave of violence that has claimed over 100,000 lives since 2007.

The gang has been weakened since the killing of former boss Heriberto Lazcano in 2012 and the subsequent capture of Trevino Morales’s brother two years ago.

Among the grimmest incidents pinned on the Zetas are the massacres of dozens of migrant workers, an arson attack on a Monterrey casino in 2011 that killed 52 and the dumping of 49 decapitated bodies near the same city in 2012.

Founded by army deserters in the late 1990s, the Zetas initially acted as enforcers for the Gulf Cartel, based along the border with Texas and one of the oldest organized crime groups in Mexico. But the group struck out on its own in early 2010, setting off the most violent phase in Mexico’s drug war.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP, REUTERS)

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