Eleven more people have been killed in a wave of violence in a Mexican cartel stronghold rocked by gang infightingauthorities said Sunday.
Among the latest deaths are five men whose bodies were found on a highway south of the city of Culiacan, the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office said in a daily update.
More than 30 people have been killed in a week of massacres in Sinaloa, although authorities have not said how many are linked to infighting within the cartel.
The clashes follow the dramatic arrest on US soil on July 25 of the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel Ismael “El Mayo” Zambadawho claimed to have been kidnapped in Mexico and surrendered to the United States against his will. Zambada pleaded not guilty last week new York in a drug trafficking case that accuses him of participating in murder plots and ordering torture.
Zambada, 76, was arrested with Joaquin Guzman Lopeza son of El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
The violence is believed to have pitted gang members loyal to El Chapo and his sons against others close to Zambada, who pleaded not guilty to a series of charges in a New York court on Friday.
Schools were closed Thursday and Friday due to the violence and the governor said Independence Day celebrations planned for Sunday had been canceled.
The United States issued a security alert Thursday due to “reports of carjackings, gunfire, security force operations, roadblocks, burning vehicles and road closures” in the Culiacan area.
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In a unexpected twistLast month, Mexican prosecutors said they were bringing charges against Guzmán for allegedly kidnapping Zambada — but he also cited another charge under a section of Mexico’s penal code that defines what he did as treason.
Nowhere in the affidavit is there any mention that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos — “little Chapos” — a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel made up of Chapo’s sons, which smuggles millions of doses of fentanyl, a deadly opioid, into the United States, causing an estimated 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution, and hot peppers to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “given dead or alive to the tigers.”
El Chapo, the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons offenses.
Last year, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to the president of Mexico, alleging that he was subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.
