US cops find 11 kids in gunmen’s hideout

Eleven children aged between one and 15 were rescued in the US state of New Mexico after police raided a hideout occupied by armed men.

Two men were arrested after police found them and the children in what one officer called “the saddest living conditions and poverty I have ever seen”, as part of the operation connected to a protracted search for an abducted threeyear-old, the Taos County sheriff’s office said.

The investigation kicked off in late 2017 on the opposite side of the country in Jonesboro, Georgia, where 39-yearold Siraj Wahhaj of the state’s Clayton County was accused of kidnapping his toddler – who was ultimately not found.

The boy’s mother told police her child went to the park with his father Wahhaj in December and never returned.

On August 2, Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe of Taos County, New Mexico, issued a search warrant describing “a makeshift compound surrounded by tyres and an earthen berm” in the rural area of Amalia, where Wahhaj and Lucas Morten were thought to be in hiding.

The FBI had provided information and surveillance on the spot but “didn’t feel there was enough probable cause to get on the property”, Hogrefe said.

“That all changed for me when a message was forwarded to us from a Georgia detective that we reasonably believed came from someone at the compound – the message, sent to a third party, simply said in part ‘we are starving and need food and water’,” the sheriff said.

“We planned a tactical approach for our own safety because we had learned the occupants were most likely heavily armed,” the sheriff said.

On August 3, a dozen officers kicked off the operation, discovering hidden beneath New Mexico’s scrubland the two men with an AR-15 rifle, five loaded 30-round magazines and four loaded pistols.

Police said the raid went without major incident or injuries even as Wahhaj needed to be “taken down”.

More ammunition was found in the hideout, which police described as a small trailer buried in the ground.

“The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer,” Hogrefe said.

“But what was most heartbreaking was when the team located five adults and 11 children who looked like thirdworld country refugees.”

Morten was charged with harbouring a fugitive and Wahhaj was booked on his warrant for child abduction. –

‘The only food we saw were a few potatoes and a box of rice in the filthy trailer’ Jerry Hogrefe

TAOS COUNTY SHERIFF