Mexico - October 2026

A wave of explosive attacks against police and military targets in recent weeks has pushed the growing use of bombs and landmines by organised crime groups in Mexico onto the political agenda, months after a similar shift towards weaponised drones raised alarm on both sides of the US border [SSR-26-02]. The clearest sign came in the north-central state of Zacatecas, where a suspected car bomb tore through the town of Ojocaliente on 30 August, injuring at least 11 people and damaging dozens of homes and vehicles, according to the Zacatecas state government.

The explosion took place outside a municipal police station in Ojocaliente. State prosecutors in Zacatecas said the device was planted in a car stolen in neighbouring Jalisco state in April and packed with roughly 200 kilograms of explosive material. Speaking in a press conference in the days following the attack, Zacatecas state security minister, Arturo Medina, said: “We are under constant siege. They want to force us to give in, and we have information that certain groups are trying to co-opt our public security chiefs. They will not succeed.” According to state authorities, the attack is suspected of being linked to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).

Zacatecas state governor, David Monreal, said the explosion was the most serious of three incidents involving explosives in the state in the space of a few days. On 29 August, a motorcycle loaded with explosives was abandoned and detonated in Villa García municipality, near the border with Aguascalientes state, severely injuring one state police officer and a civilian, while criminals attacked patrols with dynamite in the municipality of Tabasco two days earlier, injuring two state police officers. According to state authorities cited in the local press, Zacatecas alone has recorded 10 explosive attacks so far this year, up from six in 2025.

The state government of Zacatecas announced on 1 September that the man believed to have placed the device in the vehicle in Ojocaliente, Juan Pedro ‘N’, had been detained through a joint operation involving the army, the national guard (GN), the state’s rapid-response force (Friz), and the state attorney general’s office. Two further suspects accused of surveillance work were later arrested, according to the federal public security minister, Omar García Harfuch.

Speaking in a press conference on 8 September, Harfuch stated that initial lines of investigation into the car bombing pointed to a territorial dispute between the CJNG and the Cártel de Sinaloa for control of smuggling routes and illicit activities in Zacatecas. Harfuch added that there had been 23 similar explosive attacks – not limited to car bombings – since President Claudia Sheinbaum took office in October 2024, with the attacks concentrated in Zacatecas and Michoacán states and mostly perpetrated by the CJNG.

Car bombs

Detonating explosives within vehicles is one of the dominant forms of explosive attacks. In an opinion piece for Mexican digital publication Animal Político published on 7 September, analyst Víctor Sánchez Valdés stated that organised crime groups had detonated five car bombs so far in 2026. While not a new phenomenon, he noted that there have only been 28 confirmed car bombing incidents in the country since 1992. In the article, Sánchez argued Mexico is now living through a third wave of the tactic, following earlier surges tied to the Cártel de los Arellano Félix from 1992-1994 and, more recently, to the criminal groups La Línea and Los Zetas from 2010-2012.

Sánchez said that this third wave had begun in 2024 and had been mostly perpetrated by the CJNG in the states of Zacatecas, Michoacán, and Guanajuato. He also noted that a car bomb had featured in the unrest that followed the killing of CJNG leader Nemesio ‘El Mencho’ Rubén Oseguera Cervantes in February [SSR-26-04], when an explosion in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco state, reportedly killed a GN captain. Sánchez noted that most car bombings in Mexico have caused property damage and injuries rather than mass casualties, suggesting their purpose is less to maximise deaths than to project operational capability and intimidate rivals, authorities, and the public.

That reading has fed a live debate over how such attacks should be classified. Sánchez and other analysts argue the tactic can meet the legal threshold for terrorism under Article 139 of Mexico’s federal penal code, which concerns the crime of terrorism and punishes the use of explosives “to produce alarm, fear or terror in the population or a group or sector of it” with prison sentences of 15-40 years. A classification of the explosive attacks carried out by drug cartels as acts of terrorism would also chime with Washington’s 2025 designation of eight Mexican cartels, including CJNG, as foreign terrorist organisations [SSR-25-03]. However, the Sheinbaum government has so far avoided that framing, continuing to describe the incidents as cartel turf disputes rather than terrorism.

Landmines

Landmines present a parallel and, in casualty terms, deadlier threat. Michoacán, long the epicentre of cartel mine use, has recorded at least 18 soldiers killed by mines and other explosives since 2024, according to local press reports. The federal defence minister, Ricardo Trevilla, said in a press conference on 3 July that the army had detected 625 improvised explosive devices, including drones and mines, since November 2025, and was running a demining operation in the Tierra Caliente region of Michoacán while developing specialised anti-mine vehicles and mine-detecting drones. Officials attribute the land mining campaign chiefly to the dispute between the CJNG and local groups, which are fighting for territory in Tepalcatepec municipality and surrounding areas in Michoacán.

Sinaloa has also emerged as a flashpoint. In mid-August, federal forces located more than 300 improvised explosive devices and roughly 300 kilograms of explosive material in the municipality of El Rosario, amid an ongoing war between rival Cártel de Sinaloa factions that has driven up murder rates since September 2024. This all comes as, in recent years, cartels have increasingly used military-grade tactics such as car bombs, landmines, armed drones, and improvised armoured vehicles known locally as ‘monstruos’, that increasingly blur the line between organised crime and armed conflict.

• Sinaloa

September marked two years since violence erupted in Sinaloa state due to fighting between rival factions of the Cártel de Sinaloa. On 13 September protesters took to the streets of state capital Culiacán to demand an end to the violence which has continued despite government efforts to combat it. Two days later, the federal government announced a deployment of 3,400 federal security personnel to the state, bringing the number of federal forces active in Sinaloa to 20,000.

While the defence ministry appears to be taking a targeted approach to tackling landmines, the federal response to the Ojocaliente car bombing, as outlined at a press conference on 4 September, has centred on visible reassurance and increased arrests rather than a distinct counter-bomb or explosives strategy. In response to the bombing, Harfuch said federal, state, and municipal institutions were sharing intelligence and running joint operations in Zacatecas, and said that more than 3,824 arrests had been made and 1,240 firearms and 7,320 kilograms of drugs seized in the state since October 2024, while more than 787 security personnel were deployed to the state in early September as a precaution for the state fair. Harfuch added that investigators were still pursuing suspects located outside Zacatecas in connection with the Ojocaliente bombing.

Questions remain as to whether more targeted measures are needed to keep pace with cartels’ adoption of car bombs, landmines, armed drones, and other explosive attacks. While the attacks so far remain limited in frequency and scope, the trend raises the risk of widespread harm to civilians and security forces in the territories where these tactics are concentrated.

Zacatecas

The escalation of explosive attacks in Zacatecas is also notable given that the state’s homicide rate has dropped significantly in recent years, according to the national public security executive secretariat (SESNSP). The state recorded 1,625 murders in 2021 and 1,340 in 2022. This fell to 979 in 2023, 500 in 2024, and 144 in 2025. In the first seven months of this year, only 51 murders were registered in the state.