In this Thursday, July 3, 2014, photo, bullet holes and blood stains cover a wall above papers marking where bodies were found in an unfinished warehouse that was the site of a shootout between Mexican soldiers and alleged criminals on the outskirts of the village of San Pedro Limon, in Mexico state, Mexico.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 were patrolling in one of the most violent, lawless corners of the country on June 30 when they came under fire from a warehouse where a gang of 21 men and one 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 at soldiers who then killed them all, while suffering few or no losses. There have been so many such incidents that 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.
In San Pedro Limon, pools of blood and bullet marks observed by Associated Press journalists three days after the shooting raise questions about whether all the suspects died in the gunbattle, or after it was over. The warehouse where many bodies were found showed little evidence of sustained fighting.