President Javier Milei announced Sunday that his government is sending federal forces to the city of Rosario to confront drug gangs blamed for the deaths of four innocent bystanders in recent days.
Milei wrote on the social media platform X that he was acting in response to a request from Santa Fe Province Governor Maximiliano Pullaro.
He said his government is confronting "a group of narco-terrorists desperate to hold on to power and impunity."
"We are not going to stop pursuing them ... because we know it's them or us," the president said.
Milei claimed that "socialists" were respondible for crime and insecurity, saying that they "destroy everything they touch."
"If you give them the economy, they lead you to bankruptcy; if you give them security, this kind of thing happens," he claimed.
"Following a request from Governor Maximiliano Pullaro ... the Federal Police, the National Gendarmerie, the Naval Prefecture, Airport Security Police and the Penitentiary Service will assist the Santa Fe police in their fight against drug-trafficking," his office confirmed in a statement also issued on X.
The military will also provide support "always within the terms of the Internal Security Law," it added.
Argentina's Armed Forces are banned by law from intervening on national soil but can provide support for "internal security operations," especially through the use of their resources.
Rosario is the Argentina's third-largest city, with a population of 1.3 million, and situated on the Paraná river. It has become a hotspot for the movement of drugs from Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay headed to Europe and Asia.
The decision to deploy federal police and troops comes after four people were killed last week in violence blamed on drug-trafficking gangs – two taxi-drivers, a bus-driver and a gas station employee.
The provincial government says the gangs are hitting back after Pullaro imposed harsher imprisonment conditions on high-profile inmates doing time for drug offences.
In the killing of the service station worker, attackers left a note in which they demanded "rights for prisoners in jail" and threatened to kill more innocent people.
"We want our rights, to see our children and family, and for them to be respected. We do not want to negotiate anything," the attackers warned in the letter.
"The masterminds and perpetrators of these attacks, which we do not hesitate to call terrorists, seek to recover the privileges they used to have: to use mobile phones, unlimited conjugal visits and above all to plot and carry out crimes from jail," Pullaro's provincial government said in a statement issued Sunday.
Fed up with drug-related gang unrest, last week the governor released a flurry of photos of shirtless and subdued prisoners lined up under the watch of heavily armed police.
It was after the release of these photos that drug gangs hit back with attacks that left the four bystanders dead.
The governor also promised to finish construction of a long-delayed maximum security prison.
The moves have seen some accuse him of "Bukelisation" – a catchphrase in Latin America referring to the gang-busting tactics of El Salvador's hardline President Nayib Bukele.
Pullaro said the harsher conditions imposed on prisoners, in particular drug-gang bosses, had earned him 25 death threats since he took office two months ago.
Rosario has a murder rate five times the national average: 22 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.
– TIMES/AFP
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