Many Questions as Investigators Sort Out Gunbattle at Ranch in Guerrero Agence France-Presse
go to original May 24, 2015

Mexican Officials Look for Clues at Ranch of Cartel Shootout (Reuters)

One police officer dead, 42 criminal suspects killed: Mexico's government says good training and equipment explains the one-sided death toll after one of the bloodiest battles in the nearly decade-long drug war.

But experts are raising questions about what really happened at the El Sol ranch in western Mexico on Friday, nearly a year after soldiers were accused of executing gang suspects following a similarly lopsided shootout.

Friday's gunfight with suspected henchmen of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel occurred in a region considered a bastion of the gang, which has killed 28 police officers and soldiers since March.

Authorities say a three-hour firefight erupted after federal forces launched an operation against suspects occupying the vast property in Tanhuato, Michoacan state, near the border with Jalisco.

"It was a very uneven fight. A battle where 42 die on one side and only one on the other is not a battle," Raul Benitez Manaut, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told AFP, saying the gang appeared to have offered no resistance.

The ranch, surrounded by corn and sugarcane fields, was sealed off on Saturday, with hundreds of police and troops guarding the area while investigators combed the property.

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