A top Mexican drug trafficker has been killed in a raid by state security forces, defence department officials have said.

Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel was reportedly killed on Thursday while resisting arrest in the wealthy town of Zapopan in central Mexico.

Speaking to reporters in Mexico City, army spokesman General Edgar Ruiz Villegas said an army raid was closing in on one of Coronel’s safehouses when the drug lord opened fire on soldiers.

“Nacho Coronel tried to escape, and fired on military personnel, killing one soldier and wounding another,” Ruiz Villegas said.

“Responding to the attack, this ‘capo’ died.”

Coronel’s death marks a major coup for Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon, who declared a war on the country’s drug cartels after taking office in 2006.

Coronel, who has been indicted in the US, was said by officials to have been the number three leader of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, which is active in northwestern Mexico.

He was known as the “King of Crystal” for his dominance of methamphetamine production and trafficking as well as cocaine.

According to the FBI, which offered a $5m bounty for Coronel, he was believed to be “the forerunner in producing massive amounts of methamphetamine in clandestine laboratories in Mexico, then smuggling it into the US.”

Coronel was a close partner of Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, considered the country’s top drug lord and the leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Courtesy by aljazeera.net