Gunmen wound Mexico City police chief; 3 dead

Ahigh-sided construction truck and a white SUV pulled into the path of Mexico City’s police chief just as dawn was breaking Friday on the capital’s most iconic boulevard and assailants opened fire with .50-calibre sniper rifles and grenades on his armoured vehicle.

The cinematic ambush involving at least a dozen gunmen left chief Omar Garcia Harfuch wounded with three bullet impacts and shrapnel. Two members of his security detail were killed, as was a woman who happened to be driving by.

The high-powered armament and brazenness of the attack suggested the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and hours after the attack, Garcia blamed them via Twitter from the hospital.

“This morning we were attacked in a cowardly way by the CJNG,” Garcia tweeted, using the Spanish-language acronym for Mexico’s most violent criminal group.

“Two colleagues and friends of mine lost their lives,” Garcia wrote. “I have three bullet wounds and various pieces of shrapnel. Our nation has to continue standing up to cowardly organized crime. We will continue working.”

His office later said he was undergoing surgery.

Federal Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo, referring to Garcia’s tweet blaming the Jalisco cartel, said in a news conference that “this is one of the hypotheses that the Mexico City prosecutor’s office is investigating.”

Durazo said Mexico’s intelligence agency apparently had information that the cartel was planning an attack, but did not offer additional details. He said Garcia was shot in the shoulder, collar bone and the knee.

Mexico City Attorney General Ernestina Godoy Ramos said on Twitter that 12 suspects were arrested and that her office was investigating the attack.

Jalisco is the same gang that U.S. prosecutors said tried to buy belt-fed M-60 machineguns in the United States and that once brought down a Mexican military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. In October, cartel gunmen ambushed and killed 14 state police officers in Michoacan.

But such a high-profile attack in Mexico’s capital is a blow to a federal government struggling to respond to record levels of violence across the country.

The gang has established a nearly national presence, from the white-sand beaches of Cancun to Mexico City and the country’s most important ports, as well as key border cities traditionally controlled by other cartels.

Friday’s attack came two weeks after rumours swirled for a day that Jalisco’s leader Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, better known as “El Mencho,” had been captured or killed — though officials later denied that. Oseguera is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s most-wanted fugitive, with a $10-million price on his head.