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Cartel Members Gun Down Helicopter in Mexico During Narco Raids

CARTELWAR — Wreckage from a military tank that was set on fire allegedly by cartel members.

Three Mexican soldiers were killed Friday when members of a drug cartel opened fire on a military helicopter forcing it into an emergency landing. The authorities said that 10 more soldiers were wounded in the incident.

The government announced on May 1 the beginning of Operation Jalisco in the country’s largest state of Jalisco against the New Generation Drug Cartel, which has been expanding its reach in the province in recent months.

“I lament the deaths of the members of the Mexican military in the fulfillment of their duty in Jalisco,” President Enrique Peña Nieto tweeted.

In the state capital of Guadalajara, the cartel group also set several buses and cars on fire, torched banks and gas stations, and blocked roads in at least 20 areas across the city. The governor said that today’s attacks were a result of the announcement of the operation.

Such “narco-blockades” are a common cartel response to the arrest of important members or are used to foil police and military operations.

Luis Carlos Nájera Gutiérrez de Velasco, the state’s attorney general, described the group as the “least vulnerable, least attacked” of the major drug gangs and said the federal government has not been doing enough to help the state.

“Remain calm. If you have any reason to leave your house, don’t go out,” the Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said on Twitter as the country celebrated celebrated the May 1 holiday.

Last month, the same group killed 15 police officers in an ambush that was described as the deadliest since president Peña Nieto took office in 2012.

Mexican Drug Lord Hid Out In A Bat Filled Cave Before Being Caught After Girlfriend Brings A Birthday Cake

“I killed them because they were assholes who snitched on me, when I didn’t do anything to them, and only helped everybody,” Gomez said in an audio file released in November.

“But I know I’ll eventually pay for it.”

Three months later, the leader of the Knights Templar cartel fell.

A former primary school teacher, Gomez, known widely as “La Tuta,” was apprehended in Morelia, Michoacan state. It was the Mexican government’s most significant arrest since the capture of notorious Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, which occurred almost exactly a year before.

The arrest came at around 3 am at a hot dog stand in downtown Morelia, after what the Mexican president referred to as “months of investigation.” The detention, authorities said, unfolded without incident.

In a video released to Mexican news outlets taken in the hours after Gomez’s arrest, the drug lord appears at ease but recalcitrant, saying he was arrested “because I’m a criminal.”

“Because I led a gang of pendejos,” or idiots, he said.

caveGomezMartinez — Cave where Mexican drug capo Servando Gomez Martinez lived while in hiding.

Birthday cake mistake

The Gomez capture was marked by a series of events reminiscent of the days Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein spent in hiding before he was captured.

Gomez, increasingly isolated by the pursuing authorities and pressured by his cartel and autodefensa rivals, evaded police for months by hiding out in a bat-filled cave, Mexico’s federal police commissioner told the news agency EFE in an interview.

The cave had previously served as a holding cell for detainees. Gomez, 49, spent his final free months in “misery,” commissioner Enrique Galindo told EFE.

By early February, authorities had narrowed the search down to one of ten properties. A messenger whose phone was tapped finally led authorities to his location.

On February 6, a girlfriend of Gomez named Maria Antonieta Luna Ávalos visited him along with others who brought food and drinks, including a chocolate birthday cake, which was found in the refrigerator at his home at time of his arrest.

Hours after Gomez’s capture, his brother Flavio Gomez Martinez was detained in the city of Merida on the Yucatan peninsula, in possession of firearms and narcotics, authorities said. Six other people linked to Gomez have also detained.

“We now have 90 of the 122 most dangerous [people] detained,” Mexican interior minister Osorio Chong said.

Read the FULL STORY on Vice News.

See more pictures, including the now infamous chocolate birthday cake that led to his capture.