A kingpin's killing puts the complexity and brutality of Mexico's drug war on vivid display

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February 14, 2017 8:59 PM

A Mexican governor praised a recent operation — in which a helicopter opened fire on a home in a city in western Mexico — as "surgical."

Police guard an area after a gun battle in which a suspect identified by authorities as the leader of the Beltran Leyva cartel was killed, Nayarit, Mexico, February 10, 2017.

On the evening of February 9, a Mexican navy helicopter hovering over the city of Tepic in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit laced a home with a six-second stream of machine-gun fire.

Mexican officials said the gunfire came because gunmen had shot at marines with "high-caliber" weapons in the area and then barricaded themselves in the upper level of a house.

One official told the Associated Press that the Black Hawk helicopter had been called in for "dissuasive fire," meant to suppress fire from the house.

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