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A confrontation that lasted for more than three hours between alleged members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the federal forces in the community of Tinaja of Vargas, in Tanhuato, Michoacán, left 42 alleged criminals killed, as well as a federal policeman.
The authorities also reported three people arrested, and the seizure of an arsenal.
The National Commissioner of Security Monte Alejandro Rubido explained that the clash was held within the so-called Operation Jalisco, which began on May 1, and as a follow-up to a prior investigation opened on Thursday, since armed persons reportedly invaded a property in the area known as Rancho El Sol.
In order to investigate the facts a joint operation was deployed in the areas between members of the Ministry of National Defense (SEDENA), the Federal Police, the Office of the Attorney General (PGR) and state authorities.
The federal security cabinet reported that around 9:00 a.m. Friday, the federal forces were in the area of the Guadalajara-Morelia highway when they detect a vehicle with armed individuals, who began to shoot.
The attackers tried to take refuge in Rancho El Sol, which they had taken control by force, and then began an "intermittent" confrontation that lasted three hours, in which a local winery and six trucks were set on fire.
Rubido indicated that after repelling the attack, the authorities began a persecution which ended in the aforesaid property, where they found more armed men, and they requested air and land support, with a Blach Hawk helicopter arriving at the area.
The area which was the scene of the confrontation has an extension of 112 hectares and is composed of a main house, a wine cellar and extensive agricultural extension systems, in which the assailants dispersed, "complicating the actions, and leading to the confrontation continuing intermittently for approximately three hours, in at least three different areas of the site", according to Rubido.
Friday night, the Commissioner indicated that "42 suspected criminals were killed and three more arrested, supposedly members of the criminal organization that has the state of Jalisco as its main area of operation," in clear allusion to the CJNG.
During the clash, a federal police officer was killed when he tried to aid one of his colleagues who was injured during the confrontation.
