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The Latest: Trump offers Mexico aid against drug cartels Nine members of Mormon family with U.S. citizenship killed in attack in northern Mexico; Trump offers support
(32 minutes later)
MEXICO CITY — The Latest on the slaying of U.S. citizens in northern Mexico (all times local): MEXICO CITY — Assailants have killed at least nine members of a fundamentalist Mormon family in northern Mexico, authorities reported Tuesday, burning alive a woman and her children in a brutal assault that highlighted the growing danger posed by organized-crime groups around the country.
7:55 a.m. Alfonso Durazo, the minister of public security, told a news conference that three women and six children were killed. They were part of a community of U.S.-Mexican dual citizens.
President Donald Trump is offering Mexico’s government unspecified help to “wage war” on drug cartels after a family from a breakaway faction of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints was massacred in northern Mexico. The vicious attack stunned a nation still reeling from an assault by Sinaloa Cartel gunmen on the city of Culiacan, which forced the government to hand over the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán shortly after he was captured.
“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. We merely await a call from your great new president!” Trump said in a series of tweets addressing the tragedy. President Trump tweeted that “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 offered to help Mexico strike back at the cartels, saying they “have become so large and powerful that sometimes you need an army to defeat an army!”
Trump added that the U.S. government stands ready to get involved. He said that Andrés Manuel López Obrador has made fighting drug cartels a top issue. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador thanked Trump for the offer but said Mexico would act with “independence and sovereignty” in pursuing the criminals behind the attack.
“But the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army! “ Relatives of the dead posted video of a charred vehicle in which the victims had been traveling.
López Obrador has favored a less militaristic approach to the problem, saying a policy of frontal confrontations by his predecessors led only to more violence. “This is how we live under the government of @lopezobrador,” tweeted Alex LeBaron, referring to the president. “Mexican Mormons, innocent women and children were ambushed in the Chihuahua sierra, shot and burned alive by the Cartels that rule in Mexico!”
___ The attack occurred on Monday when the women were driving with their children in several vehicles from Bavispe, in Sonora state, to a Mormon community known as La Mora in neighboring Chihuahua state. Organized-crime groups in the area have been fighting and may have initially mistaken the vehicles for their rivals, according to news reports.
7:15 a.m. One vehicle, driven by Maria Ronita LeBaron, had a flat tire, and the others turned back to get help, according to the reports. The assailants attacked the first car, killing the driver and her four children — including two 6-month-old twins, according to the reports. They then set the vehicle on fire.
Mexico’s top security official says at least 3 women and 6 children were slaughtered by cartel gunmen and one child is still missing in northern Mexico. Relatives say the victims are U.S. citizens. When the rest of the group returned to the site in two vehicles, they were also ambushed, the reports said. Several other children escaped.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said Tuesday the gunmen may have mistaken the group’s large SUVs for rival gangs. He said six children were wounded in the attack, and five have been transferred to hospitals in Phoenix, Arizona. Jhon LeBaron, a relative, said in a Twitter post that the victims included the five people in the first car, as well as his aunt Dawna and her 3- and 11-year-old children, and another relative, Christina Langford Johnson.
Durazo said the Sinaloa cartel has an important presence in the area, but is fighting for the territory with rivals. Another member of the clan, Julian LeBaron, said he discovered Christina’s body and her infant when he reached her vehicle.
The chilling attack targeted U.S. citizens who live in a community founded as part of an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I found Christina. She was outside her car, face down, assassinated, and I found her baby, who was still alive,” he told Ciro Gómez Leyva, host of a news show on Radio Formula.
Police and army troops are searching for the missing child. “I don’t know if there’s a war here or what’s happening,” LeBaron said.
Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. In besieged Mormon colony, Mitt Romney’s Mexican roots
The LeBarons describe themselves as Mormons but are part of a polygamous offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Last month, in a botched anti-drug raid, Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of the city after soldiers attempted to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished the younger Guzmán rather than risk what it feared would be a bloodbath.
“Hard to imagine that what happened in #Sonora today won’t impact [Mexico-U.S.] relations and security policy in [Mexico],” wrote Falko Ernst, Mexico analyst for the International Crisis Group, on Twitter. “Over the next days, I’d expect pressure within the U.S. to build on the Trump [administration] — by media and evangelicals, e.g. — and for that pressure to be passed onto López Obrador.”
The attack came just weeks after Sinaloa Cartel gunmen seized control of Culiacan to free the son of notorious drug trafficker Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, Ovidio Guzmán, who had been detained on a U.S. extradition warrant. The government relinquished the younger Guzmán rather than risk what it feared would be a bloodbath.
The LeBarons are descendants of Mormons who moved to Mexico in 1924, after disagreeing with the central church over polygamy. For decades, they lived quietly in farming communities, maintaining close ties with the United States and speaking both Spanish and English.
But their relative wealth made them targets of extortion and kidnapping when organized-crime groups began to assert themselves in northern Mexico. In 2009, a prominent member of the clan, Benjamin LeBaron, 31, was shot dead near his community in northern Mexico. He had publicly denounced the drug traffickers, who had earlier abducted his younger brother, demanding a $1 million ransom. (The family refused to pay). The killers left a message saying they were retaliating for LeBaron’s activism.
The latest attack coincided with a visit to Sonora by U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau. “The security of our fellow [U.S.] citizens is our priority,” he tweeted. “I am following closely the situation in the mountains between Sonora and Chihuahua.”
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