MEXICO CITY – At least ten murders in Sinaloa, Mexico, are believed to be tied to recent U.S. arrests of cartel leaders, according to CBS News. The killings are reportedly the result of infighting within the dominant drug smuggling cartel in the region.
As previously reported by Emily’s Hope, the FBI arrested Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, a leader of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa cartel, along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of the infamous Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, in July. Both were arrested in El Paso, Texas. Zambada and “El Chapo” co-founded the cartel, with “El Chapo” serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison since 2019.
According to CBS News, Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha confirmed that four murders on Friday and six more on Saturday were directly related to internal cartel disputes. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also acknowledged two additional killings linked to the conflict.
“We don’t want the situation in Sinaloa to take a turn for the worse,” López Obrador said. “It has been stable as far as violence is concerned. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t violence, but there wasn’t confrontation, fighting between groups.”
