Mexico Urging Vigilantes to Step Aside in Drug Cartel Conflict
Mexico’s government pledged Monday to take control of a violent western state after days of fighting between masked vigilantes and members of one of the country’s most powerful drug cartels, Reutersreports.
Since late 2013, vigilante groups in the state of Michoacan have moved deeper into Knights Templar cartel-controlled territory, and now they are converging on Apatzingan, considered one of the gang’s main strongholds. However, the vigilantes’ movement has raised the risk of a bloody urban battle in the city, and Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong urged the groups to withdraw from the battleground so federal forces could take over, the article says.