Mexico officer flees drug gang killers targeting police Mexico officer escapes drug gang killers targeting police

MEXICO CITY — A federal police commander escaped killers near Monterrey on Tuesday as authorities in Mexico City pursued leads in a plot to assassinate more top police officials.

For the first time, Mexico's warring drug gangs are training their guns on the heads of the nation's security forces. Under siege from an unprecedented federal anti-narcotics campaign, the gangs are switching from bribes to bullets in defending their lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

The result is three police commanders killed in the capital since May 1, including Edgar Millan, who as commissioner of the 30,000-member federal police led the civilian front of the drug war.

Another federal police commander narrowly escaped assassination early Tuesday. Arturo Cabrera had just left the Nuevo Leon state police academy at 1 a.m. when gunmen opened fire on his car, wounding him slightly in the face. He managed to return to the police base, where he exchanged fire with his assailants before a SWAT team came to his rescue, officials said.

The force's Mexico City commanders have been less fortunate.

Anti-narcotics officials revealed details late Monday on a cell of killers they said was behind Millan's May 8 assassination. The gang's alleged leader, Jose Antonio Montes, was himself a federal police officer. He was arrested along with five suspects, including the alleged hit man, Alejandro Ramirez.

The gang was apparently plotting to kill a total of six police commanders in the capital, officials said. In addition to Millan, targets included Roberto Velasco, a former head of the federal organized-crime unit, who was gunned down outside his Mexico City home on May 1.

At his arrest, Montes was carrying a list of license plate numbers belonging to the commanders' vehicles and what appeared to be sketches of Velasco's house, they said. All the targets were former or current top officials of the federal anti-narcotics squad.

Federal investigators suspect the Sinaloa drug cartel was behind the attacks in the capital. Millan had recently coordinated the arrest earlier this year of Arturo Beltran Leyva, the cartel's alleged No. 2 man.

Agents have also arrested a dozen other cartel members and seized millions of dollars in weapons and cash in recent raids in Mexico City and the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa.

On Tuesday, President Felipe Calderon dispatched hundreds of federal police to reinforce anti-narcotics efforts in Culiacan, the Sinaloa capital and the cartel's headquarters.

Twelve federal police have been killed in the state so far this month. And analysts predict the bloodshed will only increase, as the gang gives vent to internal rivalries.

In recent weeks, Culiacan has been littered with banners from feuding factions threatening violence against each other and the security forces, including one hung inside the city's Roman Catholic cathedral.

Experts say the government crackdown has fueled tension between the reputed cartel boss, Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, and Beltran Leyva, who is aligned with the Juarez cartel. Guzman's son, Edgar, was killed on May 8 in a shootout between rival traffickers outside a Culiacan supermarket. And local news reports suggest Beltran's gang might have been responsible.

The violence is also a reaction to a more coordinated assault by the federal authorities on the cartels' power structure, some analysts said.

"For the first time, we're seeing surgical assaults on their safe houses, where the police go, attack and arrest them 10 or 15 at a time," said Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based security analyst. "This suggests a far more effective intelligence effort" by the federal forces.

However, Mexican authorities dispute whether the police force is up to the challenge of taking on the drug gangs.

Bipartisan members of the Mexican Congress are calling for the army to patrol the capital. Already, thousands of troops are battling the traffickers in a dozen states across Mexico.

"The police are totally out of their depth here," Obdulio Avila, a legislator from Calderon's conservative National Action Party, said on Tuesday. "There are entire neighborhoods where the police don't dare go in."

He denied that the demand was a political challenge to the capital's leftist mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, who has opposed such a plan.

"It's not a political demand," Avila said. "It's a citizen's demand."

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