Death toll in cartel attack near U.S.-Mexico border reaches 21

Mexican security forces on Sunday killed seven additional members of a suspected cartel assault force after it breezed into a town near the Texas border and engaged in an hour-long attack, officials said.

That brought the death toll to at least 21, according to officials with the Coahuila state government, which added that authorities were continuing to hunt down remnants of the force that arrived in a convoy of trucks before attacking the Villa Union city hall Saturday.

Gov. Miguel Angel Riquelme told local media that the attack yesterday killed 14 people, four of them police officers. He added that several municipal workers were also missing, and by Sunday it still was not clear they had been found.



An additional statement on Sunday did not give a new death toll. However, it did say that seven more attackers had been killed in addition to 10 reportedly shot and killed the previous day.

Angel Riquelme said the assault force stormed the town of about 3,000 in trucks, then attacked local government officials, causing state and federal forces to respond.

Trucks full of bullet holes that were left in the streets after the attack were marked C.D.N., the Spanish initials of the Cartel of the Northeast organization.

Villa Union is located about 35 miles south-southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas, and 12 miles from the town of Allende, the site of a 2011 massacre involving the Zetas cartel in which officials say 70 died.

The Saturday attack comes after suspected cartel members assassinated three women and six children of the Mormon faith who all held dual U.S. citizenship.

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