ACAMBARO, Mexico (AP) — A car bomb left outside a police station in the western Mexico city of Acambaro injured three people, prosecutors in the violence-wracked state of Guanajuato said Thursday.
They said another explosion occurred in the nearby town of Jerecuaro, but no one was injured.
The near-simultaneous attacks in two different cities, about half an hour apart, indicated the involvement of drug cartels that have been waging bloody battles in Guanajuato for years.
Despite the violence, newly installed President Claudia Sheinbaum vowed to continue her predecessor’s “hugs, not bullets” approach. Sheinbaum said Thursday that she has ordered the military to have “no confrontations” with the cartels.
“We are not going to return to a war against the narcos,” Sheinbaum said.
But it takes two to tango, and her government already seems to be embroiled in a war situation with the cartels in several states, whether she likes it or not, just three weeks after taking office.
The car bomb in Acambaro was big enough to throw parts of the burnt-out car across a tree-lined median in the street outside the police station, according to photos distributed by the municipal police.
The powerful blast apparently blew away the windows and doors of nearby houses.
It was the most serious car bomb attack against authorities in Mexico since June 2023, when a cartel used a car bomb to kill a National Guard officer in the nearby town of Celaya in Guanajuato.
In July 2023, a drug cartel in the neighboring state of Jalisco detonated a coordinated series of seven driving bombs, killing four police officers and two civilians. The improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were apparently placed in holes in the roadway.
The use of car bombs and improvised explosive devices illustrate the increasingly open, military-style challenge posed by the country’s drug cartels.
Sheinbaum has pledged to continue the policy of her predecessor and mentor, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to avoid confrontations with drug cartels. He publicly appealed to the gangs to curb violence and offered training programs to reduce the number of young recruits for the cartels.
The policy did not result in a significant reduction in Mexico’s historically high homicide rate.
