Cartel Gunmen, Police Clash in Mexican Border City

Chaos spread in a Mexican border city as a group of gunmen from the Gulf Cartel clashed with state police forces. Most of the gunmen escaped as authorities managed two arrests. Police also seized two vehicles and weapons.

The fighting began on Friday afternoon when a squad of state police officers responded to a call of gunmen roaming the San Francisco neighborhood just south of the city’s downtown area, according to information provided to Breitbart Texas by Tamaulipas state authorities. When the officers arrived, a group of gunmen in two vehicles began shooting at police as they attempted to escape.

Police officers fought off the attack and called for backup to begin tracking down the gunmen. Following a brief search, police officers spotted one of the vehicles in the Santa Cruz neighborhood — about a mile southeast of the initial clash. The gunmen abandoned the vehicle and took their weapons as they fled. Just north of the initial location, authorities stopped a second vehicle and arrested two men. Inside the vehicle, authorities found a firearm, a radio, and makeshift road spikes. There were no serious injuries or fatalities in the clash.

The shootout comes as the border city of Matamoros continues to see regular shootouts tied to internal fighting within the local faction of the Gulf Cartel. That criminal organization controls all of the drug and humans smuggling from Matamoros into Brownsville, Texas.

Editor’s Note: Breitbart Texas traveled to Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila, and Nuevo León to recruit citizen journalists willing to risk their lives and expose the cartels silencing their communities.  The writers would face certain death at the hands of the various cartels that operate in those areas including the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas if a pseudonym were not used. Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles are published in both English and in their original Spanish. This article was written by “J.C. Sanchez” and “J.A. Espinoza” from Tamaulipas.