President Donald Trump urged Mexico on Tuesday to “wage war,” with U.S. help, on the drug cartels believed to have ambushed a group of American Mormons in northern Mexico, killing nine women and children.
“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively,” Mr. Trump wrote in a tweet.
The ambush occurred Monday in Rancho de la Mora, in an area along the border between the States of Sonora and Chihuahua that is notorious for drug traffickers and bandits, a relative of several of the victims said.
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Julian Lebaron, an activist who has denounced criminal groups in the area, told Formula Radio that his cousin was travelling to the airport with her four children when their van was attacked and set on fire with the victims inside. “It was a massacre,” he said.
Two other vehicles were also found with the bodies of two women and a boy and a girl. At least five other children managed to escape and walk home, Mr. Lebaron said.
Mr. Trump said Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had made fighting the drug cartels a big issue, “but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!”
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“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!”
The Mexican government deployed the Army to fight drug trafficking in 2006, but experts blame the so-called “drug war” for the spiralling violence between fragmented cartels and the military, which has lead to more than 250,000 murders.
Mexico to cooperate
Meanwhile, Mexico’s president said Tuesday he will talk to U.S. President Donald Trump about cooperating in response to a massacre that targeted members of U.S. Mormon community.
“All the cooperation that is needed is what I’m going to talk to Trump about,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said.