In the latest outrage on Mexico's grisly narco-wars, gunmen in Morelia, Michoacán, June 19 tossed a grenade at an ambulance and then opened its doors to kill a patient who had narrowly survived an earlier shooting, as paramedics ran for their lives. Vehicles carrying four masked gunmen cut off the ambulance around 2 AM. After the grenade blast set the ambulence on fire and the two paramedics fled, the gunmen opened the back doors and fired on the man and his wife, who was accompanying him. The 20-year-old woman is in serious condition at a local hospital, police said.
The state prosecutor's office said the victim had been taken to a local hospital by his family after being wounded in a shootout between rival gangs in Uruapan June 12. He was being transferred to a better-equipped hospital in Morelia, the state capital.
Uruapan, a city of some 240,000, has been hard hit by narco-violence that has killed more than 10,800 people nationwide since 2006. The mayor, Antonio González, is among seven detained Michoacán mayors charged by Mexican authorities June 18 with protecting members of La Familia [2] drug cartel. Gunmen last week ago tossed a grenade and opened fire on a crowded taco stand in Uruapan, killing a 15-year-old employee and a police officer who was eating there. (AP [3], Informador [4], Guadalajara, June 19)
See our last post on Michoacán and Mexico's narco wars [5].
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