Mexican military personnel located a major weapons stockpile, including 157 rifles, a rocket launcher, and two rockets, among other items, buried at a site in the state of Coahuila (in northern Mexico), the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) announced.
Mexican military personnel located a major weapons stockpile, including 157 rifles, a rocket launcher, and two rockets, among other items, buried at a site in the state of Coahuila (in northern Mexico), the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) announced.
The uniformed personnel carried out intelligence work in the municipality of San Buenaventura in Coahuila, a state bordering on the United States, work that led them to a site with a “subterranean storage chamber” containing weapons and military equipment, the agency said in a statement.
The discovery included “154 long guns, 7 handguns, 92,039 cartridges of different calibers, 4,629 ammunition clips, 10 dismantled guns, a rocket launcher, two rockets, and four mortar grenades,” as well as thousands of accessories for military-style insignia and military-style clothing, among other items, the agency indicated.
More than 102,000 handguns and high-powered rifles have been seized by the Mexican authorities in a little over four years, according to official figures.
It is believed that up to two thousand guns may enter Mexico illegally on a daily basis, according to estimates by Mexican arms-trafficking experts.
These weapons are behind a good part of the more than 37,000 homicides committed in Mexico between December 2006 and December 2010, in the context of a struggle among drug cartels.