Mexico City - Drug trafficker Arturo Beltran Leyva, who is one of the bosses of the Sinaloa Cartel, escaped from a police raid last week in central Mexico in which two police officers were killed and nine of Beltran Leyva's men were arrested, the daily El Universal reported Wednesday. According to federal government sources cited by the Mexican newspaper, a convoy of suspicious vehicles was detected on May 7 by police on the road from Cuernavaca to Acapulco. The authorities did not know that the drug boss was present.
The confrontation prompted a shootout with high-calibre weapons in the town of Xoxocotla. Beltran Leyva's bodyguards reportedly used 11 assault rifles, one grenade launcher and thousands of cartridges to prevent their boss's capture in the operation coordinated from Mexico City by police boss Edgar Millan.
Millan was killed that night by a hired assassin, who waited for him at his home, in an attack that had apparently been planned in advance, possibly by the Sinaloa Cartel, in revenge for numerous drug confiscations in the Mexico City airport.
El Universal reported that four former members of the Mexican military were among Beltran Leyva's men. Other members of the convoy stopped to fight police while their boss got away.
Sources cited by El Universal noted that police did not know at the time that "the boss of the Sinaloa Cartel was travelling in the vehicle that led the convoy," but that his presence was confirmed later by several of the men arrested.
