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TIJUANA – A special federal task force captured several men believed to be high-ranking members of the Arellano Felix cartel amid gunfire in a pre-dawn raid Friday, according the local Mexican military command. The suspects were gambling around 2 a.m. in a room at Caliente Casino, owned by former mayor Jorge Hank Rhon. Alfonso Duarte Mujica, local military commander, said at a press conference Friday morning that one of those captured was Pedro Ignacio Zazueta, known as “El Pit,” believed to be one of the leaders of the Arellano cartel. Zazueta is a lieutenant to Fernando Sanchez Arellano, known as...

Tijuana is a chaotic Mexican border city of 1.5 million people and seen as a direct threat to the United States through its AIDS crisis, officials say. When Mexican President Felipe Calderon opens the 17th International AIDS Conference in Mexico City on Sunday, he can boast that his country has one of the lowest HIV rates in the Americas. But, he can't include Tijuana, one of the busiest border crossings in the world, in that category, The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) said. Tijuana, located 20 miles south of San Diego, has an HIV infection rate that's nearly triple the national average...

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...

In 2007, the number of Americans kidnapped while in Mexico doubled from the previous year. This has not only reduced tourism to Mexico, it is affecting the future of real estate projects, such as Donald Trump's towers in Tijuana. Jill Barshay reports TEXT OF STORY Lisa Napoli: This week, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Americans heading to the northern border region of Mexico. The reason: a surge in violence and kidnappings linked to Mexican drug cartels. Marketplace's Jeff Tyler reports the violence it's starting to take its toll on the tourism industry. -------------------------------------------------------- Jeff Tyler: Last...

Soldiers seized assault rifles, grenades, marijuana and bulletproof vests bearing police insignia after a brief shootout in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. No one was wounded in the overnight exchange of fire with three suspects hunkered down in a house in La Mesa district, army Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito told reporters Friday. Troops seized 91 assault rifles — some with butts of gold and ivory — along with 18 grenades, the bulletproof vests and more than 880 pounds of marijuana, Aponte Polito said. The three suspects, aged 25 to 33, were arrested. The bust followed weeks of bloody confrontations...

TIJUANA -- Marcos Rojas, a waiter at Mr. Tequila Restaurant, roams the Plaza Viva Tijuana, eager to pour double shots for partying tourists. This downtown gateway used to be crowded with Southern California day-trippers, Midwestern families and busloads of German and Japanese tourists. But empty bars and shuttered businesses now outnumber people mingling near the broken fountain. Rojas, who earns tips by making a show of slamming tequila shots on the table and pouring them down customers' throats, says it's been a week since he performed one of his signature tricks, twirling a tourist on his shoulders. "Look around, it's...

Organized, well-financed and violent Mexican kidnapping cells are targeting a growing number of U.S. citizens visiting communities popular with San Diegans and other California residents. Advertisement Last year, at least 26 San Diego County residents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach or Ensenada, local FBI agents overseeing the cases said yesterday.

TIJUANA, Mexico — Gunmen chased a pickup truck into Tijuana's international airport on Wednesday, firing at and killing the driver, whose vehicle crashed through the windows of the terminal and came to rest near a security check point. Two women riding with the victim were wounded and the airport's operations were briefly interrupted, the Baja California state attorney general's office reported. The shooting occurred in the early morning when few people were at the terminal. The gunmen fired into the pickup as it lay inside the airport lobby to make sure the driver was dead. They fled in another vehicle....

TIJUANA, Mexico – A key hitman for Mexico's Arellano Felix drug cartel was arrested on Saturday in this crime-ridden border city, in another coup for President Felipe Calderón's clampdown on traffickers. After an anonymous tip-off, soldiers stormed a house and arrested Alfredo Araujo Avila, also known as Popeye, Tijuana's military chief Gen. German Redondo told reporters. “He is considered one of the most dangerous hitmen of the Arellano Felix cartel,” Gen. Redondo said. Araujo Avila had dodged arrest for a decade in Tijuana, which is just over the U.S. border from San Diego. He is wanted in the United States...

TIJUANA – Days after a wild, deadly shootout between drug cartel gunmen and Mexican police and soldiers, authorities have uncovered what they say is a clandestine training ground for cartel assassins, complete with an underground target range that investigators believe went undetected for months. The house was raided late Saturday night by heavily armed federal police. They found two armored pickups parked at the home, along with two other vehicles that had hidden compartments, authorities said. At ground level, the two-story green-and-white hillside house in the Independencia section of Tijuana included a machine shop for assembling and repairing weapons. Parts...

They've already shot up his house and gunned down three cops. He urges citizens to stand with him. TIJUANA -- The bullet holes pockmarking the walls of his home were just three days old when Alberto Capella Ibarra took over the police force of this violence-plagued city. Twenty gunmen dressed in black had swarmed his yard in the middle of the night, and he'd fought them off, firing an automatic rifle. Taking office Dec. 1 as the city's secretary for public security, Capella, a longtime activist, declared war on organized crime and challenged citizens to join him in the battle....

Does anybody know what this is all about?Tiajuana

Mexican authorities say they found the bodies of six kidnapping victims after hundreds of police fought a three-hour battle with gunmen in Tijuana. They say the victims were discovered tied up, gagged and shot execution-style in a house. One member of the Arellano Felix drug cartel was killed in Thursday's battle. Authorities also arrested four suspects - two of whom are police officers. Four police officers were injured in the gunbattle, which forced the evacuation of nearby schools. Mexican television showed people running for cover to escape the gunfire. The violence is the latest in the Mexican government's crackdown on...

TIJUANA, Mexico -- A shootout with police in Tijuana on Thursday has prompted the evacuations of their City Hall and police headquarters, NBC 7/39 reported. Earlier in the day, more than 100 children were escorted at gunpoint out of their preschool by armed guards, following the gun battle in the Ermita neighborhood. Four people were injured as a result of the gunfire. As many as 1,500 Mexican authorities will be in Tijuana by the end of the week to get control over rioting drug gangs. Authorities in Mexico said they're responsible for the deaths of at least three police officers,...

TIJUANA, Mexico - Officials said they found six executed kidnapping victims inside a Tijuana house where gunmen took refuge Thursday during a chaotic three-hour shootout with soldiers and police. The victims, all male, were blindfolded and gagged and had been shot in the head, said Edgar Millan, a spokesman with the federal Public Safety Department, at a news conference in Tijuana. Soldiers, state and local police were sent in to help control the firefight that began when federal agents prepared to raid a house near the U.S. border that police now say was a shelter for a cell of the...

Still in Control Pervez Musharraf was calm, confident and—despite a flurry of rumors—not about to announce his resignation. Instead, the Pakistani president's "concession" to his troubled nation was an announcement that he would allow Britain's Scotland Yard to help local law enforcement agencies with their investigation into last week's assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Speaking in a nationally televised address two hours after Pakistan's election commission announced the postponement of the ballot to Feb. 18, six weeks later than had been scheduled, Musharraf was notably deferential in his remarks about Bhutto, often invoking her "martyrdom" and extolling...

6 killed, 5 injured in three incidents TIJUANA – A high-ranking police commander, his wife and his 11-year-old daughter were among six people killed in a burst of overnight violence in Tijuana that has left residents shaken and law enforcement officials vowing to fight harder than ever against organized crime. The killings occurred in three parts of the city over six hours late Monday and early yesterday. By the time the violence was over, heavily armed men also had killed two other Tijuana police officers and a civilian, and wounded three adults, a 4-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. It...

TIJUANA, Mexico, - Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the U.S. border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday. The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints. "This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," said an official from...

Law enforcement officials on both sides of the border are seeing a crime wave fueled by U.S. deportation policies, which dump busloads of criminal immigrants in large groups at border cities like Tijuana. "Nobody saw this coming," said Tijuana's Mayor Kurt Honald, who has protested the dumping of criminals at the Tijuana gates. He says deportees have triggered a 300 percent rise in petty crime during the last year, as criminals raise money for a return to the U.S. Others join narcotics cartels and smuggling organizations to pay for their return. "They just go right back to the United States....

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire. "A neighbor shouted, 'Stop it! There are children living here," said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls....