The Argentine government deployed this wednesday the first police reinforcements to combat the drug trafficking in the agribusiness cityl of Rosario, 300 km north of Buenos Airesin reaction to recent episodes of violence that claimed the life of a child in a shooting.
(Read here: Video: Thieves try to rob a man and he shot them; one died)
“We all know what is happening, it is imperative that we get to the bone,” said the Security Minister, Hannibal Fernandez, when speaking to a Rosario police battalion.
The third Argentine city by number of inhabitants (1.3 million) attracted international attention last week when two unknown men on a motorcycle shot at a supermarket belonging to the family of the soccer star’s wife. Lionel Messi and left a threatening message.
by order of the president Alberto Fernandeznew forces were dispatched to Rosario until completing some 1,400 troops.
“There are people who are suffering and live with their hearts in their mouths,” admitted Minister Aníbal Fernández. Moments of anxiety were lived on Sunday with the death of an 11-year-old boy in the middle of a shootout between drug traffickers, in an impoverished neighborhood on the outskirts of Rosario.
The images of Serious incidents in the neighborhood when the child’s relatives and neighbors looted and burned down the houses of those allegedly responsible for the crime.
As a result of the neighborhood attack, the drug gangs sent threats to shoot “bullets for everyone” through social networks, in retaliation. Rosario is the city with the highest crime rate in Argentina, with a rate of 22 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, five times more than the national average.
President Fernández also arranged to send members of the company of army engineers to help develop the popular neighborhoods where drug trafficking runs rampant. The military will act without weapons due to the strict constitutional prohibition to intervene in internal security.
The reaction of organizations defending human rights was to reject the mobilization of the military. “It is a serious fact that shows the political failure to seriously solve urban violence,” said the humanitarian Center for Legal and Social Studies.
In another reaction to the government announcement, Rosario’s attorney general, María Eugenia Iribarren, told LT8 radio that “there are cases of police complicity with drug trafficking, in a degradation that takes years.”
AFP
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