SAN PEDRO LIMON, Mexico — Bullet marks and blood spatters on the walls inside a grain storage warehouse deep in the mountains of southern Mexico tell a grim story of death involving soldiers and alleged criminals. It may not be the same story officials tell, however.
Mexico’s Defense Department says soldiers patrolling in one of the most violent, lawless corners of the country June 30 came under fire from a warehouse where 21 men and a woman were hiding. One soldier was wounded, but all of the suspects were killed.
The shootout was the most dramatic in a string of battles in which the army says criminals fired first and soldiers then killed them all, suffering few or no losses. Human rights groups and analysts have begun to doubt the military’s version.
“It raises suspicion, the simple fact that there were 22 dead on one side and one wounded on the other side,” said security analyst Alejandro Hope, a former official in Mexico’s domestic intelligence service.
One witness who lives near the warehouse said he heard almost two hours of automatic gunfire and loud bangs early June 30. But he couldn’t say if it came from the warehouse or from the forested hillsides around it. The man, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, said he saw soldiers searching the hillsides after the shooting stopped.
Despite that heavy gunfire, only about six incoming rounds appeared to have hit the facade of the warehouse. At least five spots along the warehouse’s inside walls showed the same pattern: One or two closely placed bullet pocks, surrounded by a mass of spattered blood.
The Mexican Defense Department did not respond to requests for comment. The army’s rules of engagement allow soldiers to fire on armed civilians only if the civilians fire first.
