Mexican drug cartel chief reported dead in gun skirmish

The bible-quoting leader of one of Mexico's six major drug cartels is believed to have been killed in two days of skirmishes with federal forces in a state on the country's Pacific coast.

A tense calm hung over the western state of Michoacán today after fighting that began on Wednesday night and was initially concentrated in and around the city of Apatzingan, one of the core bastions of the La Familia cartel.

"Different sources of information obtained during the operation coincide that Nazario Moreno González was killed yesterday," a government spokesman Alejandro Poire said in a statement to the press. One of the cartel's founders, Moreno González went by the nicknames El Chayo, The Doctor and the Craziest One, and was infamous for intermingling self-help maxims with quasi-religious justifications for killing rivals.

Poire said federal police were sent to investigate reports of armed men in the area on Wednesday, and that the heavy resistance they encountered suggested the presence of a major cartel leader.

With the federal forces mounting a full scale pursuit of the gunmen into the surrounding mountains with the support of helicopters, La Familia ambushed police reinforcements and orchestrated flare-ups in other parts of the state.

Gunmen commandeered dozens of vehicles on main roads and set them ablaze to create burning barricades.

All five roads leading from the state capital Morelia were blocked in this way on Thursday.

State police cleared the last remaining smouldering vehicles today but many parents kept their children away from school fearing the violence would flare up again. Black Hawk helicopters belonging to the marines were reported to be flying over Apatzingan.

The official death toll of 11 was made up of five police officers, three gunmen and three civilians, including an eight-month-old baby, and was expected to rise. Government spokesman Poire said the gunmen had retrieved most of their own dead and wounded as they retreated.

The death of Moreno is a severe blow to La Familia and a boost to President Felipe Calderon who is struggling to persuade Mexicans that his offensive against the drug cartels is working.

The offensive actually began in Michoacan with the deployment on 11 December 2006 of troops sent to quash the turf war between La Familia and the Zeta cartel. Four years later there are soldiers, marines and federal police deployed in hot spots around the country, but the violence is worse than ever.

In Michoacán things did calm down somewhat for several years, but this appeared to have more to do with La Familia winning its battle against the Zetas than the ability of the offensive to impose the rule of law.

La Famila is the newest major Mexican cartel, almost unknown before September 2006 when members burst into a Michoacán disco and dropped six severed heads on the black and white dance floor with a note about "divine justice."

In addition to its reputation for brutality, innovation and strangeness, La Familia has also become known for daring direct attacks on the federal authorities and a sophisticated propaganda strategy.

In the last few months, however, the authorities have arrested several key second-tier figures in the organisation and begun predicting its imminent demise.

Aside from Moreno, the cartel's best-known leader is a former teacher called Servando Gomez Martinez and nicknamed La Tuta. He is famed for calling into a TV phone-in programme and urging the government to negotiate with the cartel, and was recently reported to be depressed by one of the latest waves of arrests of cartel members.

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