GUATEMALA CITY – Los Zetas, the armed wing of Mexico’s Gulf drug cartel, have threatened to kill Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, the National Civilian Police, or PNC, said on Sunday.

The death threat against the president was received Saturday on the PNC’s emergency line, Strategic Intelligence Secretary Manuel de Jesus Galeano said.

Colom broadcast his weekly show Saturday from the eastern city of Chiquimula.

The Administrative and Security Affairs Secretariat bolstered the president’s security detail and restricted access to the site Colom used to broadcast his show, Galeano said, without providing further details about the threat.

The Colom administration recently launched extensive operations against drug traffickers, arresting at least 10 suspected Zetas.

PNC chief Marlene Blanco said Thursday that she received death threats from organized crime groups operating in Guatemala.

The threats started several weeks ago, Blanco said, adding that Interior Minister Salvador Gandara had also received death threats.

Anonymous callers said Daniel Perez Rojas, a Mexican who is under arrest on suspicion that he is the leader of Los Zetas, wanted Blanco dead.

Last month, Colom said at least 50 members of Los Zetas were operating in Guatemala.

The security forces and intelligence agencies have found “at least 50 members of Los Zetas” in the Central American nation, Colom said.

The members of Los Zetas, a band of former Mexican soldiers now working as hired guns for drug traffickers, are allegedly operating in northern and northwestern Guatemala, where they control smuggling routes.

Five suspected Zetas were arrested on Feb. 8 in a joint operation conducted by the PNC and the army on a highway in Alta Verapaz province, near the city of Coban, located some 220 kilometers (137 miles) north of the capital.

The men, who entered Guatemala from Mexico in a farm truck, were armed with five AK-47 assault rifles, automatic pistols and a large quantity of ammunition, the security forces said.

On Nov. 30, 17 people were killed in a gun battle between drug traffickers in Huehuetenango province, on the border with Mexico.

Colom blamed the killings on the Gulf cartel.

While the gunbattle was apparently sparked by the outcome of a horse race in the village of Agua Zarca, the underlying cause was more likely tensions between Guatemalan drug gangs and traffickers from neighboring Mexico, Blanco said.

In December, Vice President Rafael Espada acknowledged that as a result of the drug wars in the United States and Mexico, traffickers have moved their operations to Guatemala.

“Guatemala is the victim of groups of drug traffickers who have escaped from Mexico, because they see fertile ground here. The Mexican cartels are entering Guatemala,” Espada said.

Four suspected Zetas were arrested in early November in Guatemala City.

The Attorney General’s Office said in October that upwards of 300 Zetas might have entered the Central American country, seizing control of the illegal drug trade in wide swaths of eastern and northern Guatemala.

Officials here began focusing on Los Zetas after the March 25, 2008, “narco-massacre” near the Caribbean resort town of Zacapa, where 11 people were killed, including Guatemalan drug kingpin Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon.

Five Zetas were arrested in April 2008 in connection with the Zacapa slayings, including the Mexican group’s purported second-in-command, Perez Rojas, who appears likely to be extradited to his homeland after facing trial in Guatemala.