Head of drug cartel captured in Mexico

Mexican police have arrested the head of a drug cartel, who is also wanted by US authorities for drug trafficking and murder.

The head of the Juarez cartel, 38-year-old Jesus Salas Aguayo, was captured at his ranch in the village of Villa Ahumada about 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

He was one of the Mexican government’s “top targets” in its war against narco-traffickers.

Aguayo became the head of the once-powerful Juarez cartel after the capture last October of its then 51-year-old leader Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, aka “El Viceroy.”

The Juarez cartel engaged in a multi-year turf war with interlopers from the rival Sinaloa cartel, which took thousands of lives in Ciudad Juarez in the past eight years.

Carrillo’s capture came just days after Mexican authorities nabbed Hector Beltran Leyva, the head of the Beltran Leyva crime family and one of the most notorious Mexican drug lords, in central Mexico.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto has pledged to rid the country of the gang violence that has claimed about tens of thousands of lives in Mexico since 2007.

Aguayo’s capture is the most recent in a string of victories against the drug cartels.

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