Mexico can be a bit of a scary place.
The South American country is taking the war on drugs to new heights, killing a major cartel of eleven men in a helicopter gunship attack.
It's like something out of Apocalypse Now. The video shows the helicopter swoop over a Lindavista suburb building in the dead of night, and blast a building with open fire.
It kind of looks like an alien attack. It's pretty terrifying.
Mexican marines took on a chief figure of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel last week. The marines stormed his compound in Tepic; the chipper tore the building to pieces with high-calibre minigun fire.
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Watch a video of it here....
Credit: Iván Hernández
The Federal Interior Department said on Twitter at the weekend that they had got their guy - Juan Francisco Patron Sanches, who ran cartel operations in the Pacific-coast state of Nayarit.
Seems a bit callous to announce his death on Twitter surely?
Apparently, Patron and drug cartel henchmen barricaded themselves at the top of the building before opening fire on forces attempting to raid the property. So the marines asked for back up in the form of a helicopter.
The helicopter was called in to give dissuasive fire a term used by the military that means fire first and ask questions later.
A lot of Mexicans in the media are not happy about the use of the helicopter, which they think is incredibly dangerous.
Credit: PA Images
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But the government has said that actually, it's safer than using men o the ground: they brought in the helicopter "with the aim of reducing the level of aggression and reducing the risk of civilian or federal casualties." It's within their own rules of engagement - and there's been no casualties reported.
The governor of Nayarit state praised the armed forces' "surgical" precision and said there had been no civilian casualties. He said the gun battle was "proof that Nayarit is, and will remain, at peace."
I'm not sure what that means - being infested with gun cartels and having helicopter gun battles doesn't sound too peaceful to me.
"Yesterday's events were done to protect and safeguard the citizenry," said the governor. "We had zero civilian losses."
The cartel retaliated later that day and shot at federal forces - four more of the cartel died in the gunfight.
Drugs are huge business in Mexico. Drug cartels can make around £30 billion for drug trafficking in the US alone. And it's a risky business too. Since 2006, at least 80,000 people have died in the drug wars - that they know about. A lot of people simply "disappear".
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Words Laura Hamilton
Featured Image Credit: PA Images