Authorities claim that an explosive device detonated as a forensic examiner and a detective were inspecting a murder scene in northern Mexico.
Although Guanajuato state police have not confirmed it, the object looks to have been a booby trap.
Both of the injured agents’ conditions are stable, according to the state prosecutor’s office, which released a statement on Thursday. Police in the violent Guanajuato city of Irapuato reported previously finding plastic bags coated in blood inside a home.
A decapitated head was also reportedly discovered in the home, according to local media.
When the explosion happened, a local website, TVConsequencias, was capturing the crime scene. In the footage, which was uploaded on Facebook, agents can be seen approaching a home that has been cordoned off with police tape when a massive explosion breaks out inside the building.
Later in the footage, one of the injured agents can be seen being guided into a truck while a huge plume of smoke can be seen emanating from the residence. Vehicles from the National Guard are soon to arrive.
According to Guanajuato-based security specialist David Saucedo, the explosion was brought on by “a door-connected booby-trapped grenade. When it was opened, it exploded.”
The local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the Jalisco cartel have been engaged in a brutal drug cartel territorial war in Guanajuato for years.
Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, the cartel’s boss in Jalisco, is one of the most sought-after assailants in the United States and has a $10 million bounty placed on his head. The cartel is “one of the five most dangerous transnational criminal organizations in the world,” according to the Department of Justice.
Booby traps aren’t very common in Mexico, but drug traffickers in the nearby state of Michoacan have started employing them to damage army vehicles on the roadways.
In the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez in 2010, a vehicle bomb intended for federal police officers exploded, killing three people and injuring nine more. The explosives-packed automobile was detonated by a drug cartel suspect using a cell phone, killing a federal police officer and two civilians while injuring nine others.