Gunmen from the Los Zetas’ Cartel del Noreste faction carried out a significant attack on rival gunmen near a small rural community in the border state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The intense battle lasted over an hour and involved armored vehicles, heavy weaponry, and explosives. By the time authorities arrived on the scene, the assailants had escaped, taking with them at least five of their fallen comrades and leaving behind several burnt-out armored trucks.
The skirmish occurred this week close to the town of Los Lay Yons in Nuevo Leon. Members of CDN-Los Zetas engaged with a rival group in a confrontation northwest of the Monterrey metropolitan region. The CDN-LOS Zetas are among six Mexican drug cartels identified by the US State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.
Details about the number of participants in the clash remain unclear, but the two groups fought for about an hour before retreating. In the absence of local police in Los Rayones, the state attorney general’s office mobilized a significant number of officers from other areas to respond swiftly.
Nuevo Leon State Police took hours to send officers from several surrounding regions, and eventually, federal forces joined in. Upon arrival, law enforcement found six vehicles abandoned by the assailants, two of which had been riddled with bullets, while others were burnt. Police reports indicated numerous blood stains on the ground and thousands of bullet casings scattered about, underscoring the severity of the fight.
Sources indicate that this violent exchange is linked to the expansion plans of CDN-Los Zetas, currently led by Cisneros Trevino, the nephew of former leaders Miguel Angel (Z-40) and Omar Trevino (Z-42). He has been methodically expanding their reach by deploying his forces and establishing hidden bases for resupply, enabling increases in territory—a tactic not commonly adopted by other cartels. Authorities revealed that Juanit, the current leader, displays a similar brutality to previous heads of CDN-Los Zetas and is believed to be behind a majority of the violent incidents across Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuira.
