Fourteen killed in Mexico drug battle near U.S.

[syscom3]

I'm, quite the pragmatist so I'm going to venture this ..... its the US demand for drugs that is ultimately the root of such violence. Unless something is done to dramatically reduce demand of it, this type of violence will soon be spilling over to our borders on a daily basis.

Fourteen killed in Mexico drug battle near U.S.

Fourteen killed in Mexico drug battle near U.S. - Yahoo! News

By Lizbeth Diaz 1 hour, 39 minutes ago

TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Fourteen Mexican drug gang members were killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle near the U.S. border on Saturday that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war.

Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.

The bodies lay in pools of blood, strewn along a road on the city's eastern limits, surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings. Many of the victims' faces were destroyed.

"By the way this happened and the guns used, we believe the men are from the same cartel, the Arellano Felix gang," said a senior police officer in Tijuana who declined to be named.

Two of the dead are believed to be senior hitmen for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by the large gold rings on their fingers. The rings carried the icon of Saint Death, a ghoulish grim reaper figure that gangsters believe protects them, police said.

Officials also found police helmets and body armor that the two hitmen used for protection.

Six men were arrested but the remaining survivors escaped, the office said.

A source close to the Tijuana mayor's office said local authorities had requested more troops for the city bordering San Diego, California, and that they could arrive this weekend.

President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state on Mexico's Pacific coast since taking office in December 2006. Some 25,000 soldiers and federal police are deployed to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.

The army in Tijuana said it was on high alert for reprisals against soldiers and federal police following the shootout and the ensuing arrest.

"The risk of attacks against our agents after an event like this is extremely high," said Lt. Col Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's police chief.

The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California. Recently the group has been under attack from a rival gang from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.

Some 190 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and there have been more than 900 this year.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Good 14 more fu-cktards sent to hell. Now if we can get rid of them all on both sides of the border...

[Catch22]

There's nothing worse than a drug dealer, especially those that don't do it themselves.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Oh I can think of people worse than drug dealers, for example a child molestor or child rapist.

[pbfoot]

drugs like Oxy, meth. opiates , coke are drugs that ruin and a bullet is to good for them but if your calling some guy selling pot on the same level as a diddler that outrageous

[Lucky13]

If there's something that I hate with blinding passion and holy fury, it's drug dealers and those that abuse women and children....

I'd do things to them that would make medieval torture, look like innocent sunday school playground games....

[Lucky13]

By ELLIOT SPAGAT, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 14 minutes ago



TIJUANA, Mexico - Massive gunbattles broke out between suspected drug traffickers who fired at each other while speeding down heavily populated streets of this violent border city early Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine.

All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located.

"Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs," Moreno told reporters.

Eight suspects and one federal police officer were injured in the pre-dawn shootings, none gravely, said Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department. The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.

Police recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or U.S. license plates; a total of 54 guns; and more than 1,500 spent shell casings at various points in the city where the battles broke out, Perez Aguilar said.

At one point, the alleged traffickers fired at one another as their sport utility vehicles sped down a busy six-lane boulevard lined with restaurants, car repair shops, medical offices and strip malls.

Bullet holes could be seen in the walls of a factory building and on the perimeter wall of a housing complex along the road, but no bystander deaths were reported. It was not clear how long the gunbattles lasted.

A mall security guard who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisals said he heard hundreds of gunshots fired, some of which passed near him.

"I hit the ground," the guard said. When he got up again, he said he saw bullet holes in the wall behind him, a dead man lying in a pool of blood and 11 abandoned, bullet-ridden SUVs on the street.

The first shootout claimed seven victims. Three subsequent gunbattles — one outside a hospital — claimed five more, police said. The body of a man police believe to be the 13th victim turned up at a city hospital.

Tijuana, a sprawling metropolis just across the border from San Diego, California, is pervaded by frequent violence, much of it blamed on drug cartels battling for control of lucrative trafficking routes. The city is home to the Arellano-Felix drug cartel.

In January, eight people died in a gunbattle at a Tijuana safe-house apparently used by drug hit men to hold kidnapped rivals. In that confrontation, hit men holed up inside the house battled police and soldiers with automatic weapons for three hours.