The death toll from Tuesday’s “unprecedented” explosive attack in northwestern Mexico is now six dead and 12 injured, the governor of Jalisco state said on Wednesday, who spoke of a “brutal act of terror”.
“It’s something we’ve never seen before here,” said Enrique Alfaro, the governor of a state that gave its name to one of Mexico’s two most fearsome cartels. He had announced the previous day a death toll of three, calling the attack “a challenge to the Mexican state as a whole”.
Three municipal police officers were killed, while this attack targeted the police and the prosecution. “Staff members of @FiscaliaJal (Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office) and the police […] suffered a cowardly attack with explosive devices, which according to a preliminary report caused the death of three police colleagues Municipal and Public Prosecutor’s Office, as well as ten injured,” Governor Enrique Alfaro wrote on his Twitter account.
The attackers used “seven” “improvised explosive” devices, the governor detailed. The attack targeted “staff of the State Prosecutor’s Office (of Jalisco) and the municipal police of Tlajomulco”.
Clandestine mass graves were recently found in this town near the capital of Jalisco, Guadalajara, the third largest city in Mexico.
The victims of the bomb attack also responded to a telephone call from a woman claiming to be a member of a group of people – often mothers – who are looking for one of their missing relatives. It was “a trap”, we were “looking to regroup our police officers”, said the governor.
The state of Jalisco is home to the Jalisco Nueva generacion (CJNG) cartel, which has ramifications throughout Mexico and even beyond. Jalisco is the Mexican state (there are 32 in total) with the most missing persons (some 15,000 out of a total of 111,203 recorded since 1962).
Bomb attacks are relatively rare and recent in Mexico, a country that recorded some 30,000 homicides in 2022.
In June, a National Guard agent died and others were injured in a car bomb explosion in Guanajuato state.
The authorities were also challenged on Monday and Tuesday in the state of Guerrero, where ten police officers and three civil servants were held hostage by protesters infiltrated by organized crime according to the authorities.
The thirteen public order officials were finally released on Tuesday after negotiations between the federal state and the demonstrators, who had also broken down the door of the governor’s palace in Guerrero with an armored police vehicle, and blocked a highway.
Mexico has recorded some 350,000 murders and tens of thousands missing since 2006 and the launch of a military offensive against organized crime.