Mexico Gunmen Allowed to Flee After Freeing 42 Bank Hostages

LOS MOCHIS, Mexico — Gunmen who holed up in a bank after a foiled robbery in which five people were killed let their 42 captives go Thursday and were allowed to flee this northern Mexico city with three Red Cross workers as hostages.

Francisco Labastida Ochoa, the governor of Sinaloa state where Los Mochis is situated, said the gunmen and their three hostages--who were traded for the 42 captives--left the Los Mochis branch of the Banco Nacional de Mexico in an armored car. The governor told the Televisa network’s afternoon news program that the car had just enough gasoline to leave the city.

Police said the gunmen released the Red Cross workers unharmed 15 minutes later, when they abandoned the armored car for a stolen pickup truck and a station wagon.

One Gunman Wounded

Rosario Angulo, a hostage who drove the armored car, said that only five of the seven gunmen, one of whom had an arm wound, fled with the Red Cross hostages.

“I think the other two mixed in among the crowd at the moment of leaving the bank,” said Angulo, 20.

Angulo said the robbers were armed with “goats horns (sawed-off machine guns), ammunition and dynamite sticks.”

Gov. Labastida Ochoa said the agreement with the gunmen did not prevent police from pursuing them.

“We’re not deceiving anyone,” Labastida Ochoa said. “We simply reached an agreement in which we could safeguard lives.”

Some Hostages Hospitalized

Several of the freed hostages were taken to a local hospital by the Red Cross.

Bank officials contacted after the siege said the gunmen apparently did not take any money with them.

Soldiers were posted on the highways leading outside the city and were seen checking vehicles.

The standoff in Los Mochis, a city of 120,000 on the Gulf of California, began shortly before 1 p.m. Wednesday as gunmen took 42 hostages in the bank after an alarm alerted police to the attempted robbery.

Hundreds of police surrounded the branch of the National Bank of Mexico during the siege.

Jesus Acosta, a spokesman for the local Red Cross, said one of its rescue workers was among the five people killed in a gunfight that ensued between police and the bank robbers.

He said the others killed were a customer, the bank’s deputy manager, a teller and a policeman who was inside conducting business at the time of the robbery and tried to prevent it.

Bank robberies and other kinds of crime have increased significantly in Mexico since 1982, when an economic crisis began to eat away purchasing power and drive up unemployment.