Fifteen killed in Mexico drug battle

[frenchywife]

Drug cartels at their finest:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...39514820080426

[Pondlife]

Could you add the text of the article? External links often break over time, which makes the thread difficult to read.

[frenchywife]

Originally Posted by Pondlife

Could you add the text of the article? External links often break over time, which makes the thread difficult to read.

No problem - here it is:

[top]Fifteen killed in Mexico drug battle near U.S.

Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:35pm EDT

By Lizbeth Diaz


TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Fifteen Mexican drug gang members were killed near the U.S. border on Saturday, their bodies scattered along a road after one of the deadliest 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 battled each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.


Fourteen bodies were lying in pools of blood on a road near assembly-for-export maquiladora plants on the city's eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings, and many of their faces were destroyed.


The 15th body was found nearby. Eight men were injured and six others were arrested, but some gang members are thought to have escaped.
"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 hit men 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 figure that gangsters believe protects them, police said.


"Today shows we are facing a terrible war never seen before on the (U.S.-Mexico) border," Baja California Attorney General Rommel Moreno told a news conference.


Police cordoned off all the surrounding roads, forcing workers at a nearby maquiladora to walk through the crime scene to get to work.
"Another shootout," said a woman who gave her name only as Lisa. "There are just too many, we are so afraid."


TROOP REINFORCEMENT


Heavily armed federal police patrolled across Tijuana following the gunfight. Soldiers and police guarded the city's main hospital where the wounded were being treated to prevent any attempt by drug gangs to pull them out.
Baja California state police chief Daniel de la Rosa said fresh troops from Mexico City were arriving in Tijuana, which borders San Diego, California.
President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state 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 arrests.
"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.


(Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by Xavier Briand)

[BuffaloBoobs]

All's well, s'long as they keep that dope illegal!

[Panthers007]

Just wait until they find a tunnel under the border that goes to Bush's ranch in Texas.