Human rights activists and their relatives in a violent Mexican border town New Laredoacross from Laredo, Texas, blamed the army and National Guard troops for the deaths of a nurse and an 8-year-old girl.
Relatives said at the weekend that the victim was apparently caught in the crossfire of gun battles with suspected drug cartel vehicles being chased by military patrols. Nuevo Laredo has long been dominated by the ruthless Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the old Zetas gang.
The Human Rights Committee of Nuevo Laredo, an activist group, said in a statement late Sunday that another civilian was killed in another military car chase in the city. The National Guard is a military force trained and commanded by the Department of Defense.
civil prosecutor in the border country of Tamaulipas – where Nuevo Laredo is located – refused to confirm or deny the three separate incidents that occurred on Friday and Saturday. Federal prosecutors and the Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
The shooting deaths, if confirmed, would mark the second time in two weeks that Mexican military forces have killed civilians. It will also bring three the number of children or adolescents killed in incidents involving military forces: an 11-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were among six migrants who died, seen by soldiers, on October 1 in the southern state of Chiapas.
The first incident in Nuevo Laredo happened late Friday when a nurse, her husband and son met on the road where soldiers were chasing the suspect’s vehicle.
The dead woman’s husband, VĂctor Carrillo MartĂnez, told the local press that “there was a confrontation” and that his wife died “in the crossfire.”
At that moment, he said soldiers passed the family’s vehicle, but did nothing to help him. “He was like nothing happened,” Carrillo MartĂnez said.
The Rights Committee said a 46-year-old nurse received a bullet wound in the head. Her husband said health care personnel told her that “it was a large-caliber bullet used by soldiers.”
One day, on Saturday, an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother were driving to a stationery store when they were caught in the middle of a pursuit by soldiers or National Guard officers chasing a suspect.
The grandmother told the reporter that the military vehicle was chasing the SUV; His car got stuck between the two and the military opened fire.
“When I saw it, the car was covered in blood,” Grandpa recalled. “I looked at the girl and I said, ‘she’s bleeding’.”
“I shouted, shouted at the soldiers, but because they refused to stop, they did not help me,” he said.
The grandmother described him as a soldier, but the daughter said he was a National Guard officer.
The confusion is understandable; The National Guard was created in 2019 under civilian command, but is mostly recruited from the military ranks and given military training. In September, control of the force was handed over to the military, and they mostly wore military uniforms.
The commission said that, in the third case, the bodies of tortured young men were found in trucks taken by the army and the National Guard; said no weapons were found in the vehicle.
“No one wants to touch the military”
Former president AndrĂ©s Manuel LĂłpez Obrador, who left office September 30, gave the military an unprecedentedly wide role in public life and law enforcement; he created a military Guard and used joint military forces as the country’s main law enforcement agency, replacing the police.
But critics say the military is not trained to do civilian law enforcement work.
The army has been implicated in previous killings in Nuevo Laredo, where street shootings are not uncommon. In 2023, the Defense Department said 16 soldiers will be tried on military charges related to the killing of five people in Nuevo Laredo that year.
The May 18, 2023 murder of five people caught on security camera footage was so graphic that LĂłpez Obrador. described as a visible “execution”.
JASIEL RUBIO / REUTERS
The head of the rights committee, Raymundo Ramos, said “the armed forces continue to have enormous power, very strong and beyond civilian authority.”
“It seems that nobody wants to touch the military in this country,” Ramos said.
In November 2022, guns in Nuevo Laredo forced to cancel school classes and advisory from the US Consulate for shelter in place. Earlier that year, the US legal departure his family and some personnel in the consulate after the drug cartel gunmen opened fire in the consulate building.
The first shot at the newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum occurred on October 1 – Sheinbaum’s first day in office – near the town of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. The area is often used by migrant smugglers, but warring drug cartels also operate in the area.
Soldiers claimed to have heard “detonations” and opened fire on trucks carrying migrants from Egypt, Nepal, Cuba, India, Pakistan and El Salvador. Six migrants were killed and ten injured.
Sheinbaum has pledged to stick with the “hugs not bullets” strategy before using social policy to tackle crime at its roots.
“The war on drugs is not coming back,” the leftist president said at a press conference this month, referring to the US-backed crackdown launched in 2006.
AFP contributed to this report.
