Michoacan Violence News: 1 Wounded In Attack On Mexican Justice Department Building In Apatzingan

The local quarters of the Mexican Justice Department (PGR) in Apatzingán, the largest town in Mexico’s southwestern state of Michoacán, were attacked on Wednesday night in a shootout between federal police and unidentified suspects, wounding one. La Jornada reports that the injured man is 25-year-old Maximiliano González, who was hit by a bullet during the incident and transported to a local hospital to receive treatment. It adds that the façade of the PGR building sustained damages in six different places, and that shells from .9-milimeter handguns were found in the vicinity.

CNN Mexico reports that another violent incident occurred on Wednesday night in Apatzingán when several men opened fire upon a national pharmacy chain Farmacias del Ahorro. No victims were reported. Estanislao Beltrán, leader of the local citizen militia, said that federal forces’ inability to stop the attack or apprehend suspects so far meant a “lack of seriousness from the government." He added that he saw it as an indication that the government was going back on its agreement to ensure the safety of militia members in exchange for the militias’ ceasing of patrols, saying the safety of militia members was being put in danger after the government returned the weapons of local police whom the militias had disarmed out of suspicion they were working with the Knights Templar cartel. “Yesterday we were okay, but now with the news this morning the Apatzingán police are rearmed and that businesses are being burned …very soon, Estanislao Beltrán is going to appear in a plastic bag,” Beltrán said.

Apatzingán has been a focal point of much of the state’s conflict over the past few years. In 2011, the Knights Templar drug cartel seized control of the town from La Familia Michoacana, the cartel from which it sprang, after winning a bloody turf war. It remained a Templar stronghold until earlier this month, when citizen militias from neighboring towns took it. Shortly afterward, a group of residents -- whom the militias say are linked to the Templars -- demanded the militias deconstruct their checkpoints and leave town, torching three soda and food delivery trucks and blocking a nearby highway when they didn’t comply.