| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | February 2009 
Killings in Mexico Fuel Search for Drug Gang
 Julie Watson - Associated Press
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| | Mexico Drugs War Claims More Victims - More than 20 people have been killed in the latest outbreak of drug-related violence in Mexico say officials. | |
Mexico City - Mexican authorities found five abandoned bullet-riddled and bloodstained vehicles on Wednesday, fueling their hunt for drug gang killers following a wave of border-region slayings and clashes with soldiers that left 21 people dead, an official said.
The hours-long skirmishes around the town of Villa Ahumada on Tuesday were part of a wave of drug violence that has engulfed parts of Mexico - and has even spilled across the border - as the army confronts savage narcotics cartels that are flush with drug money and guns from the U.S.
President Felipe Calderon says more than 6,000 people died last year in drug-related violence, and U.S. authorities have reported a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions linked to the cartels - some of it in cities far from the border, such as Phoenix and Atlanta.
Investigators on Wednesday were searching for assailants after finding five abandoned vehicles near Villa Ahumada, where gunmen a day earlier had kidnapped nine people, starting the violence.
They executed six of the kidnap victims along the PanAmerican Highway outside of the town, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state.
Villa Ahumada is 80 miles south of the border city of El Paso, Texas.
An army convoy heading toward Villa Ahumada to investigate reports of the kidnappings Tuesday came across gunmen who had just executed the six kidnap victims, Torres said.
A shootout between gunmen and soldiers ensued in which seven gunmen and one soldier died, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded. |
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