2 shootouts in northern Mexico leave drug trafficker, 12 others dead

MEXICO CITY -- Two shootouts between troops and gunmen in northern Mexico have killed 13 people, including a drug trafficker linked to the slaying of a retired army officer, officials said Saturday.

Navy spokesman Adm. Jose Luis Vergara said troops were searching a villa Friday in a suburb of Monterrey when they were ambushed by a group of heavily armed men. Eight gunmen were killed, and nine were arrested in the initial shootout, he said.

Television images showed a garden littered with bloodied corpses. Several handcuffed men sat on the ground with shirts pulled over their heads and a line of automatic rifles nearby.

Vergara said soldiers had gone to the villa to check out a report that suspected drug trafficker Ricardo Almanza Morales was there. He said one soldier was wounded and is in stable condition.

Almanza Morales, killed in the attack, was accused of working for the Zetas, drug traffickers who also serve as enforcers for the Mexican Gulf cartel, and of killing army Brig. Gen. Juan Arturo Esparza and his four bodyguards in an attack last month.

Esparza was killed just after being named police chief in the Monterrey suburb of Garcia. Five police officers were among 10 people arrested in Esparza's killing.

Nuevo Leon state Attorney General Alejandro Garza y Garza said in Monterrey that a second shootout that left five dead ensued when gunmen in at least 10 sport-utility vehicles heading to the villa, presumably to rescue those detained, ran into a military convoy.

Hours after the shootouts, gunmen suspected of working for the Zetas attacked a detention center in Monterrey suburb of Escobedo, killing two federal police officers and freeing 23 inmates. Fifteen of the prisoners were members of a kidnapping gang working for the Zetas; eight were suspects in robbery investigations, he said.

Drug-fueled violence has cost more than 14,000 lives across Mexico since President Felipe Calderón sent troops to crack down on cartels in late 2006.

-- Associated Press