26 killed in Mexico gunfight as drug violence continues

MEXICO CITY — Authorities said at least 26 people were killed Wednesday in northern Mexico during a predawn gun battle between warring crime gangs, part of an escalation of deadly violence across the country.

In an interview with Milenio television, Chihuahua state prosecutor’s spokesman Felix Gonzalez said the confrontation between armed groups broke out in the town of Las Varas around 5 a.m. For the next two hours, members of the La Linea gang squared off with a faction of the Sinaloa cartel, leaving more than two dozen people dead and several others wounded, he said.

The violence in Las Varas — the border town in Chihuahua that came to symbolize the savagery of drugwar violence — comes days after a similar burst of bloodshed in neighboring Sinaloa state. Authorities said at least 30 people were killed there over the weekend; a firefight with police officers near the resort town of Mazatlan left 19 suspected cartel members dead.

Violence in Mexico has surged to record levels this year. More than 11,000 people have been killed in the first five months of the year.

Analysts say violence is swelling as members of splintered drug cartels battle for territory.

The fight against transnational criminal groups and regional security was the subject of a meeting Wednesday between President Enrique Pena Nieto and U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who is in Mexico for threedays of talks.

After an initial decline during the first two years of Mr. Pena Nieto’s presidency, killings have roared back to levels that are comparable with those during the worst years ofthe country’s drug war.

The governor of Chihuahua, Javier Corral, of the opposition National Action Party, has accused his predecessor, César Duarte, from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, of ignoring criminal cases and brokering deals with drug cartels. Mr. Duarte fled last year to El Paso, Texas, and is wanted on corruption charges.

Mr. Corral told The Wall Street Journal this week that drug traffickers were “sent to the Sierra de Chihuahua, and they began to take control of the towns, the local police forces, and they became bosses of the whole territory.”

Some experts have criticized Mr. Pena Nieto’s drug war strategy, which puts an emphasis on capturing or killing top cartel leaders instead of training police officers and creating more economic opportunities for young people susceptible to joining criminal groups.