Cops keep watch at services for drug lord

Armed police and soldiers closed in Friday on the childhood home of Mexico's top drug lord, where mourning relatives prepared to bury him at the family chapel.

About 50 police and soldiers drove up a gravel road outsi de this northern Pacific Coast hamlet early this morning, hours after the family of Amado Carrillo Fuentes laid out his remains and held a wake.Security guards inside the family compound climbed ladders to look over the surrounding 10-foot-high walls and peer down at the soldiers, armed with M-16 rifles and a machine gun-equipped Humvee about a quarter-mile away.

Carrillo, 41, died July 4 in a Mexico City maternity clinic after undergoing extensive plastic surgery and liposuction. Mexican authorities confirmed Thursday that the body was that of the elusive narcotics smuggler.

His mother, Aurora Fuentes de Carrillo, picked up the body in Mexico City and flew with it Thursday night aboard a Lear jet to Culiacan, 30 miles east of this village where Carrillo grew up.

She arrived at the family's heavily secured ranch in a white Lincoln Town Car late Thursday and passed through the wrought-iron gates followed by a hearse. About 100 villagers who had been waiting outside entered the compound for the wake.

Dozens of reporters who had been kept outside during the service were let in once the soldiers arrived - apparently to be used as a shield in the event of a raid.

On Jan. 4, soldiers and police stormed the ranch during a wedding celebration for the drug lord's sister but failed to find Carrillo.

"People here are afraid of Jan. 4," said a cousin of Carrillo's.