MEXICO CITY: The governor of Mexico's state of Michoacan said Monday weekend attacks on power stations were linked to a feud between rival drug cartels and amounted to acts of terrorism.
"We are immersed in a battle between criminal gangs," Governor Fausto Vallejo told Milenio television.
Assailants armed with guns and Molotov cocktails attacks six fuel stations and several power plants in the state on Sunday, leaving some 420,000 people without electricity for hours.
"They were acts of terrorism" that targeted "strategic services of the federation," Vallejo said.
The governor said the authorities had heard about "this possible scenario" a week ago but "not of this magnitude" and that federal police and soldiers were prepared for it.
The sabotage occurred despite the presence of troops deployed by the federal government in May to bring peace to the state, which has endured violence perpetrated by the Knights Templar drug cartel.
Police have arrested three people suspected of taking part in the weekend attacks and officials say they are investigating who may have been behind them.
The Knights Templar, the dominant gang in the region, has been engaged in turf wars with the Jalisco New Generation cartel.
The attacks on power stations came hours after vigilante groups, which formed this year to counter the Knights Templar, marched unarmed into a town dominated by the cartel on Saturday in a failed bid to oust the gangsters.
The Knights Templar accuse the self-defense forces of being backed by the Jalisco cartel, a charged denied by the vigilantes.
A government official told AFP on condition of anonymity that authorities suspect the Knights Templar brought down power in 14 towns in retaliation for the vigilante incursion in the town of Apatzingan.
Federal police and soldiers took over security in the town on Monday.
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