ACAMBARO, Mexico—A car bomb left outside a police station in the town of Acambaro in western Mexico wounded three people, prosecutors in the violence-wracked state of Guanajuato said Thursday.
They said another explosion, apparently a second car bomb, occurred in the nearby town of Jerecuaro. Although nobody was wounded, the force of that second blast was enough to blow the tile roof off a building, blacken the facades of surrounding stores and set alight a police patrol pickup truck.
The near-simultaneous attacks in two different towns located about a half-hour away from each other suggested the involvement of drug cartels that have been fighting bloody turf battles for years in Guanajuato.
A resident who witnessed the aftermath of the blast in Acambaro said that among the injured was a woman and her daughter who were waiting for a bus. Authorities had said earlier that all of the three wounded were police officers.
“A woman and a child were going to catch the school bus, and the woman was also seriously wounded,” said shopkeeper Francisca Acevedo.”They took her away in an ambulance.”
Acevedo said “it was a big explosion, very strong. We thought a tree had fallen in front of the house.”
And in another attack in Guerrero state, to the south, two municipal policemen were killed and four were wounded in a massive shootout with suspected drug cartel gunmen, who were equipped with three bullet-proof vehicles, a machine gun, and what appeared to be bombs dropped by drones.
Soldiers later killed 14 of the attackers; three soldiers were wounded in the running confrontation.
Despite the violence, newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to continue the “hugs, not bullets” approach of her predecessor. Sheinbaum said Thursday she has ordered the army “not to have confrontations” with the cartels.
“We are not going to return to a war against the narcos,” Sheinbaum said.
The car bomb in Acambaro was sizable enough to toss parts of the burnt-out car across a tree-lined median strip in the street outside the police station, according to photos distributed by the municipal police.
The powerful blast apparently blew out the windows and doors of nearby homes.
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 city of Celaya.
In July 2023, a drug cartel in the neighboring state of Jalisco set off a coordinated series of seven roadway bombs that killed four police officers and two civilians. The improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, had apparently been planted in holes dug in the roadway.