MEXICO CITY (AP) — Two prosecution officials were fired over “omissions and errors” in the search for a missing woman found dead last week in northern Mexico, authorities said.
Gustavo Guerrero, attorney general of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, did not describe what errors the two officials may have committed.
But the motel where the young woman’s body was found in an underground water holding tank had previously been searched several times before her body was finally found, only after a motel employees reported a foul odor coming from the cistern.
The case of Debanhi Escobar, 18, shocked Mexico, after a taxi driver took a photo of her standing alone on the side of a highway on the night she disappeared.
The two fired officials — the state anti-kidnapping prosecutor and the missing-persons prosecutor — were apparently involved in the search, which included taking sniffer dogs into the motel.
But almost a week after her body was finally found, far from being solved, the case has become more complicated.
Prosecutors showed video from the motel’s security cameras suggesting Escobar had entered the motel and wandered around, eventually walking off camera in the direction where three cisterns are located near a swimming pool.
Some reports had suggested the woman may have fallen into one of the cisterns and died accidentally. But prosecutors said her body was found in one tank, her handbag in another, and her cellphone and keys were found in a third.
Eduardo Villagomez, the state’s head medical examiner, said the woman died of a blow to the head. But he said that she was apparently alive when she entered the cistern and that there was no water in her lungs.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli forces shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian man and wounded three others during clashes near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The ministry said that the man died from a gunshot wound to the head. Three others, including a 16-year-old boy, were wounded by gunfire, it said in a statement. An earlier report by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the slain man was 21 years old.
The Israeli military said its troops conducted arrest raids in the northern West Bank and detained 12 Palestinians. It said Palestinians “fired live ammunition at the soldiers and hurled rocks and explosive devices at them” and the soldiers returned fire.
The army said troops also administered a demolition order for the home of the gunman who killed three and injured dozens in a Tel Aviv shooting earlier this month.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces killed a 20-year-old Palestinian man during a raid near the West Bank city of Jericho.
Wednesday’s incident came after days of rising tensions between Israel and the Palestinians following a string of deadly attacks inside Israel, arrest raids in the West Bank, clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, and rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip for the first time in months.
Israel captured east Jerusalem — which includes major holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims — along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three territories to form their future state.
POKROVSK, Ukraine (AP) — Russia cut off natural gas to NATO members Poland and Bulgaria and threatened to do the same to other countries, using its most essential export in what was seen as a bid to punish and divide the West over its support for Ukraine.
The move, condemned by European leaders as “blackmail,” marked a dramatic escalation in the economic war of sanctions and countersanctions that has unfolded in parallel to the fighting on the battlefield.
The tactic, coming a day after the U.S. and other Western allies vowed to rush more and heavier weapons to Ukraine, could eventually force targeted nations to ration gas and could deal another blow to economies suffering from rising prices. At the same time, it could deprive Russia of badly needed income to fund its war effort.
Poland has been a major gateway for the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and confirmed this week that it is sending the country tanks. Just hours before Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom acted, Poland announced a new set of sanctions against the company and other Russian businesses and oligarchs.
