Blast kills 2 Mexican soldiers and wounds 5 others in suspected booby trap by drug cartel

MEXICO CITY (AP) — An improvised land mine apparently planted by a drug cartel killed two Mexican soldiers and wounded five others, Mexico’s defense secretary said Tuesday.

Gen. Ricardo Trevilla acknowledged that the army had already suffered six deaths from such improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, between 2018 and 2024. But he didn’t specify whether those six had been killed by bombs dropped from drones, or by buried roadside bombs, both of which have been used by gangs in Mexico.

Trevilla said that devices like the one that exploded Monday were “very rustic,” and officials in the past have described them as similar to buried pipe bombs. There was no immediate information on the condition of the five wounded in the attack, which included at least one officer.

Trevilla’s description of the location where the two soldiers died Monday in the western state of Michoacan suggested that it may have been a sort of grisly drug cartel booby trap.

Trevilla said the army sent out a patrol to check on reports that there was an encampment of armed men in a rural area. The armed forces detected an area protected by stockades that appeared to be an encampment, but when soldiers approached in vehicles, they found the trail blocked by logs, so they descended and had to approach on foot.

While approaching, they spotted three dismembered bodies near the encampment, which appeared to be abandoned. But as they drew closer, a buried device exploded and struck the soldiers.

Trevilla blamed the blast on the United Cartels, an umbrella group that includes the local Viagras gang, which has been fighting bloody turf battles against the Jalisco cartel in Michoacan for years.

In August, the Mexican army acknowledged that some of its soldiers have been killed by bomb-dropping drones operated by drug cartels.

Previously, officials have said the army encounters far more roadside bombs than drone-dropped ones.

The Jalisco drug cartel has been fighting local gangs for control of Michoacan for years, and the situation has become so militarized that the warring cartels use roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, pillbox fortifications, homemade armored vehicles and sniper rifles.

In the only previous detailed report on cartel bomb attacks in August 2023, the defense department said at that time that a total of 42 soldiers, police and suspects were wounded by IEDs in the first seven and a half months of 2023, up from 16 in all of 2022.