Gunmen kill 4 Mexican soldiers investigating pipeline theft

Gunmen using local residents as a human shield opened fire on a Mexican army patrol investigating fuel pipeline thefts, killing two soldiers and wounding a third, the military said today.
Hours later, the gunmen again attacked the patrol with armored cars and high-powered rifles, killing two more soldiers and wounding nine, while three attackers were killed, the army said.
The confrontation late yesterday in the central state of Puebla marked an escalation of recent conflicts in which fuel thieves have largely taken control of some towns in the so- called "Red Triangle' area east of Mexico City.
The Defense Department said the patrol was dispatched to the town of Palmarito to investigate reports of an illegal pipeline tap. When soldiers arrived, they came under fire from assailants who took cover behind a group of women and children.

"In light of this situation, the soldiers decided not to return fire because the attackers were using women and children as a human shield," the department said in a statement.
The second attack came from five vehicles, three of them armored, according to the military, which said it caught 12 of the attackers.

Angry residents of Palmarito set up road blocks Thursday in protest of the army crackdown.
The army has increasingly faced civilian resistance to drug-eradication patrols, with women and children trying to block soldiers from cutting down opium poppy fields in recent months in the southern state of Oaxaca.

But it is the pipeline thefts thousands of illegal taps drilled into state-owned pipelines every year where local populations have been recruited en masse by gangs that often distribute drugs, steal gasoline and diesel and carry out extortion and kidnapping.
They are known in Mexico as "huachicoleros," a term that refers to illegal or sub-par fuel sold from plastic tanks on roadsides.
Some townspeople in Puebla and other states have largely based their local economy on fuel stolen from the pipelines, sometimes collecting gasoline and diesel in buckets when a tap leaks and gets out of control.
A few now dress images of the Baby Jesus as the "Nino Huachicolero," compete with a small plastic tube and a plastic jug to hold fuel.

And mariachi musician Tamara Alcantara has composed the "cumbia de huachicol," a song in which she defends the residents of her state, which has become known for fuel thefts.
"The huacihcolero is like the devil, everybody knows he is there but nobody has seen him," goes the song, which she notes is a bit satiric. "I'm speaking about the history of the people of Puebla," Alcantara said, noting that huachicolero is just the latest of a long series of derogatory nicknames for residents of the state.