San Cristobal De Las Casas - Some 1,000 federal police officers launched an offensive yesterday against rightwing groups charged with the 1997 massacre of 45 Tzotzil Indians in Chiapas state and other violence, police said.
The operation, headed by a special anti-paramilitary unit of the attorney general's office, went to the heart of the conflict zone in the southern Mexican highlands around the former colonial city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Troops in 100 vehicles arrived at dawn in and around Chenalho, an indigenous city near Acteal and the site of clashes between left-wing Zapatista rebels and right-wing armed bands that have been linked to the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), police said.
