10 dead in Mexico clash
Fiery conflict breaks out between police, fuel pipeline suspects
MEXICO CITY — Gunmen using local residents as human shields opened fire on Mexican army patrols investigating fuel pipeline thefts in clashes that left four soldiers and six attackers dead, the military said Thursday.
The confrontations late Wednesday in the central state of Puebla marked an escalation of recent conflicts in which fuel thieves have largely taken control of some towns in the socalled “Red Triangle” area east of Mexico City.
The Defense Department said attackers hiding behind a group of women and children killed two soldiers and wounded a third in the initial confrontation.
“In light of this situation, the soldiers decided not to return fire because the attackers were using women and children as a human shield,” the department said in a statement.
The army called for reinforcements and about 1,000 troops and police were sent in.
Hours later, gunmen again attacked the patrol with armored cars and highpowered rifles, killing two more soldiers and wounding nine, while three attackers were killed, according to the military, which said the assailants used five vehicles, three of them armored.
Puebla state officials said later that another three attackers had died.
Angry residents of Palmarito set up road blocks Thursday to protest of the army crackdown, demanding the release of some of the dozen residents detained in the clashes.
Federal Police said hours later that traffic had been restored in both directions along the toll highway between the cities of Puebla and Cordoba.
The army has increasingly faced civilian resistance to drug-eradication patrols, with women and children trying to block soldiers from cutting down opium poppy fields in recent months in the southern state of Oaxaca.
But it is the pipeline thefts — thousands of illegal taps drilled into stateowned pipelines every year — where local populations have been recruited en masse by gangs that often distribute drugs, steal gasoline and diesel and carry out extortion and kidnapping.
They are known in Mexico as “huachicoleros,” a term that refers to illegal or sub-par fuel sold from plastic tanks on roadsides.
While the government’s Pemex oil company no longer releases official figures, 5,574 illegal pipeline taps were found in 2015. By some recent estimates, they cost the company about $1.5 billion per year in lost production.
Some townspeople in Puebla and other states have largely based their local economy on fuel stolen from the pipelines, sometimes collecting gasoline and diesel in buckets when a tap leaks and gets out of control.