Nine Americans killed in Mexico in brutal ambush
Trump calls for ‘war’ against criminal groups
MEXICO CITY — Nine U.S. citizens were killed Monday when their vehicles were ambushed by gunmen in northern Mexico, a brutal attack that prompted President Donald Trump to call for a “war” against Mexico’s increasingly powerful criminal groups.
The victims — three women and six children — were members of the LeBaron family, part of a breakaway Mormon sect that has been based for decades in a remote stretch of Mexico not far from the U.S. border.
Eight other children survived the attack, spending hours hiding out in the Sonoran desert while one of them left to seek help. At least five of the children were wounded, authorities said, and were transported by helicopter to Arizona, where they are receiving medical treatment.
Relatives of the victims say the group — three women and their 14 children — had just left the community’s ranch near the small town of Bavispe in three vehicles when they were ambushed.
One of the vehicles caught fire, seemingly after a bullet hit the gas tank, killing a mother and her four children, family members said. The other victims were apparently shot to death.
The isolated desert region where the attack took place is a fiercely contested drug and migrant smuggling route about 100 miles south of the U.S. border. Authorities are largely absent, said Daniel LeBaron, a cousin of one of the victims, who said his relatives had been stopped at checkpoints set up by criminal groups in the past.
“They are living in a dangerous area,” LeBaron said in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s ground zero of a turf war.”
Mexican Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said Tuesday that the assailants may have mistaken the victims for members of a rival criminal group because they were traveling in large sport utility vehicles, which are favored by Mexican cartels. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged a full investigation into the attack, and said of the region where the attack occurred: “It’s been a very violent area for a long time.”
The massacre quickly took on a political dimension when Trump tweeted angrily about it Tuesday
morning. “A wonderful family and friends from Utah got caught between two vicious drug cartels, who were shooting at each other, with the result being many great American people killed,” he wrote.
It was not clear if the president had received intelligence about the attack or was simply speculating about what had happened — as is often his habit.
Trump also said the U.S. was ready to assist “if Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters.”
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth,” the president tweeted.
His response was a pointed jab at Lopez Obrador, who has repeatedly said he does not want conflict with criminal groups and that the militarized strategy of his predecessors turned Mexico into a “graveyard.”
Mexico and the U.S. have long cooperated on security under the Merida Initiative, a multibillion-dollar partnership under which the U.S. has trained Mexican police and soldiers and pushed for other criminal justice reforms.