Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villareal
GUADALAJARA, Mexico, July 30 (UPI) -- A Mexican drug cartel leader seen as the kingpin behind methamphetamine traffic to North America was shot and killed by the army, but others in the ring remain active, posing a continuing threat.
Ignacio "Nacho" Coronel Villareal was killed in a shootout when troops raided his house in Guadalajara. Coronel was killed trying to resist arrest, and one of his top lieutenants, Iran Francisco Quinonez Gastelum, was arrested during the operation. One soldier was killed and another was wounded in the shooting.
Police said Coronel was behind a multibillion-dollar methamphetamine production operation and one of three men identified as leaders of the Sinaloa cartel, among the five deadliest crime rings active in Mexico.
Mexican government agents have been conducting a vigorous anti-narcotics operation in the country, in some areas with U.S. help, to stem violence that claimed 22,800 lives in a tough challenge to President Felipe Calderon since he took office in December 2006.
Officials hailed the killing as the most spectacular blow against drug traffickers yet for the Calderon government, which had been struggling to cut off the Sinaloa cartel's link with about a dozen countries in the Americas and Europe.
Coronel's death still leaves within the Sinaloa cartel alone at least four other important figures seen behind the organization's successful trafficking in drugs across the Americas. Some of the men have used their wealth to earn respectability and fame and regularly feature in celebrity media. Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, one of the gang leaders, regularly appears in the lists of rich and powerful people.
Coronel was born in the northern state of Durango, which borders the state of Sinaloa, and launched his trafficking career under drug baron Amado Carillo Fuentes, leader of the Juarez cartel in the 1990s, who died in 1997.
Calderon's presidency heralded the start in 2006 of a tough campaign against the drug cartels and their turf wars that claimed many innocent lives. U.S. support for the Mexican effort sprang from concern over the turf wars spilling across the frontier into U.S. communities, many of which have elements suspected of close links with the Mexican cartels.
Brig. Gen. Edgar Luis Villegas, a spokesman for Mexico's Defense Department, told reporters in Mexico City military intelligence learned that Coronel was laying low at a safe house in the city.
CNN said Friday the operation marked a high point for Calderon's administration in what has been a bloody year on the streets of Mexico. The death toll in Mexico's drug wars this year alone reached approximately 5,000 by June.
Authorities said that along with taking a wily and seasoned trafficker off the streets, the raid marked a potentially significant blow to the Sinaloa cartel, which some critics have contended had been feeling relatively little heat from the government.
Since taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama has pledged increased support for Calderon's fight against drug cartels. Mark Qualia, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Washington, said support for Mexico was provided under Plan Merida, the $1.4 billion U.S. program started in 2007 to help Mexico fight the cartels.
