An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico's defense secretary said Tuesday. Before the blast, the soldiers had found the bodies of three people, officials said.
General Ricardo Trevilla admitted that the army had already suffered six deaths from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he did not specify whether those six were killed by bombs that went off dropped from drones, or with bombs buried by the side of the road. , both of which are used by organizations in Mexico.
Trevilla said devices like the one that exploded Monday were “very rusty,” and officials in the past have said they looked like buried pipe bombs. There was no immediate information on the condition of the five people injured in the attack, which included at least one officer.
Trevilla's description of the place where the two soldiers died on Monday in the western state of Michoacán suggesting it may have been some kind of drug cartel booby trap.
Trevilla said the army sent out a patrol to investigate reports of a camp of armed men in a rural area. The armed forces found a place protected by stockades that looked like a camp, but when soldiers came in vehicles, they found the way blocked by logs, so they dismounted and had to go near by foot.
As they approached, they saw three bodies separated near the camp, which seemed to have been abandoned. But when they were getting closer, a buried device exploded and hit the soldiers.
Trevilla blamed the explosion on the United Cartels, a shadow group that includes the local Viagras gang, which has been fighting bloody battles against the Jalisco cartel in Michoacan for years.
In August, the Mexican army admitted that some of its soldiers were killed by drones dropping bombs operated by drug cartels.
By now, officials have said that the army is encountering far more roadside bombs than those dropped by drones.
The The Jalisco drug cartel have been fighting local groups for control of Michoacán for years, and the situation has become so militarized that the warring parties use roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, pillbox fortifications, vehicles homemade weapons and sniper rifles.
Nemesio Oseguera-Cervantesalso known as “El Mencho,” the leader of the Jalisco cartel, which officials described as “one of the most violent and prolific drug trafficking organizations in the world.” The United States and the State Department have offered a $10 million prize to catch him.
In the same detail before report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at the time that 42 soldiers, police and suspects were injured by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.
In total, 556 improvised explosive devices of all types – roadside, drone and car bombs – were found in 2023, the army said in a press release Last year.
