PoByr Redacción
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A man on a motorcycle delivered a package containing explosives to a bar in north-central Mexico, and the explosion killed two men and injured four.
The bomb blew up seconds after the victims received the package Sunday at the bar next to a casino in the city of Salamanca in Guanajuato state, Gov. Diego Sinhue said.
Video posted on social media showed one man standing on the street outside the bar, bloodied and with apparently severe injuries, after the attack.
While prosecutors earlier said the package had been delivered by two men, Sinhue said it was dropped off by an express delivery driver who was apparently among the wounded.
“This is a terrorist attack unprecedented in the state,” Sinhue said.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Guanajuato has seen an increase in the use of explosives by criminals.
Guanajuato is gripped by a turf war between the Jalisco cartel and other gangs backed by the rival Sinaloa cartel.
“In the state of Guanajuato, more than in other places, for some time now they have begun using explosives to commit crimes, and to try to spread fear and terror. This is a delicate situation,” López Obrador said.
The president identified the two victims as the owner and the manager of the bar, which also served as a restaurant.
He said it was the owner’s birthday, which may have made him less wary of delivery of an unexpected package.
Explosives are sometime used by drug gangs in Mexico, but grenades are more common.
Some gangs have begun attaching explosives to drones for aerial attacks.
Prosecutors said they are investigating what type of device was used; López Obrador said the case was likely to be taken over by federal prosecutors, because criminal use of explosives is a federal crime.
The homegrown Santa Rosa de Lima cartel, which is backed by Sinaloa in its fight against the Jalisco cartel, has used car bombs at least twice in Guanajuato, but they either didn’t go off or injured no one.
Security analyst David Saucedo suggested the local cartel may lack expertise in handling bombs.
That has happened elsewhere in Mexico; in the neighboring state of Michoacan earlier this year, a member of a local cartel was reportedly killed when trying to assemble a bomb-laden drone.
In recent weeks, the same gang was able to capture a Jalisco cartel drone attached to a mortar round that failed to explode.
But Saucedo said Sunday’s attack may mark a refinement in Santa Rosa de Lima’s bomb skills.
“Yesterday’s bomb showed a greater level of ability in handling explosives,” Saucedo said.
“They used exactly the right amount needed to kill whoever opened the box. An explosive wave of 5 meters (yards) in diameter, a highly precise job.”
Casinos and bars in Mexico have been frequent targets of extortion demands by drug cartels, which have set fire to businesses or sprayed them with gunfire to enforce such demands in the past.
Bombings were frequent in Colombia when drug gangs were battling the government in the 1980s. But the Colombian cartels are believed to have hired foreigners with expertise in explosives.
While there were several hundred fewer killings in Guanajuato in the first seven months of this year compared to 2020, Guanajuato remains the state with the highest number of homicides.
HAITI
Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has fired the justice minister after the latter backed a prosecutor who sought charges against Henry over the murder of President Jovenel Moïse.
The government is in disarray after another senior official resigned saying that he would not work under a prime minster «who had come under suspicion for the murder of the president».
Henry has not commented on the allegations.
Moïse was shot dead on 7 July, when gunmen stormed his residence in the suburbs of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and killed him and injured his wife.
Police say they have arrested 44 people, including 18 former Colombian soldiers, in connection with the killing but the investigation into who may have ordered the killing continues.
The investigation took a dramatic turn last week when prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude sent a letter to Prime Minister Henry asking to discuss phone records, he said showed Henry had phone conversations with one of the key suspects just hours after the president was killed.
The suspect,former justice official Joseph Felix Badio, is suspected of having given the order to the Colombian gunmen to kill the president, he remains on the run.
Prime Minister did not comment on the phone conversations except to say that «no distraction, no summons or invitation, no maneuver, no threat, no rear-guard combat, will distract me from my mission».
On Monday the prime minister went on the offensive when he tried to dismiss the justice minister, the secretary of Haiti’s Council of Ministers (the equivalent of the cabinet in Haiti) and prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude.
A letter signed by Mr Henry accused Mr Claude of «serious administrative errors».
However, all three men continued working on Tuesday amid confusion over whether the prime minister had the power to fire them.
Prosecutor Bed-Ford Claude launched a counter-offensive asking the judge investigating the Moïse murder case to charge Mr Henry over his alleged involvement in the president’s killing.
But legal experts in Haiti say the prosecutor’s request came too late. They argue that a prosecutor cannot ask for charges to be issued once the investigation has been handed over to a judge, which had happened in this case.
VENEZUELA
Spain’s Supreme Court refused to suspend a government decision allowing a former Venezuelan spymaster to be extradited to the United States.
Lawyers for Gen. Hugo Carvajal, who for over a decade was late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez’s eyes and ears in the Venezuelan military, asked the court to put the Spanish government decision, taken 18 months ago, on hold.
But the Supreme Court said in its written decision that Carvajal had presented no new arguments against the government decision, which he had already opposed at the court in May last year.
Carvajal’s extradition procedure is currently on hold at the National Court, after he filed a request for asylum in Spain.
Nicknamed “El Pollo,′ or “The Chicken”, Carvajal was arrested Sept. 9 in a small apartment in Madrid, where he had been holed up for months.
His arrest came nearly two years after Carvajal defied a Spanish extradition order and disappeared.
In the United States, he faces federal charges for allegedly working with guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia to “flood” the U.S. with cocaine.
