Posted on 07/29/2005 5:10:41 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico- The United States is closing its consulate in this violence-wracked border city for a week following a shootout in which assailants used machine guns, grenades and even a rocket launcher to attack a home, the U.S. Ambassador said Friday evening.
In a statement from Mexico City, Tony Garza said "in light of this alarming incident and continued violence along the border, I have decided to suspend all operations except for emergency services for American citizens," for one week beginning Monday.
He said temporarily closing the consulate would allow officials to "access the security situation for our employees, American travelers to the region, and visitors to the consulate" and that during that time "we will be gauging what should be a swift and certain response from the government of Mexico, to bring this situation under control."
Garza's announcement came three days after the ambassador requested the renewal of a U.S. State Department travel advisory warning Americans about violence in Mexico, especially along the U.S. border.
Late Thursday, a group of armed men arriving in several vehicles used machine guns and explosives to attack a home on Mexicali street in southern Nuevo Laredo.
People inside the house are believed to have returned fire with powerful weapons of their own, triggering a massive shootout.
No one was injured and no arrests were made. It was unclear why the home was targeted, though witnesses said it was a safe house used by drug smugglers.
Fire from what witnesses said was a rocket launcher caused part of the home to collapse, and the walls left standing were marked with hundreds of bullet holes. A vehicle had been driven into the door of the adjacent garage.
The battle left a residential street resembling a war zone. Grenades were strewn about the scene, and soldiers who moved in to recover them said they had been lobbed at the home and exploded.
A state policeman who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals said investigators found the photographs of 14 municipal police officers and a list of officials "sentenced to death" at the home.
The officer didn't reveal the names of the officers but said each photo had their names and nicknames, what post they have at the police department and maps with their home addresses.
Authorities also recovered three AK-47 rifles, two handguns, a grenade, ski masks, and hundreds of bullets of different caliber.
Several hours after that shootout, assailants sprayed another house, this one in the Madero neighborhood, one of the richest areas in Nuevo Laredo, with more than 100 bullets from automatic weapons. No injuries were reported, nor arrests made.
More than 100 people have been killed in this city across from Laredo, Texas, since January, including 15 municipal police officers. Authorities have blamed the violence on a fight between Mexico's two most powerful drug gangs to control local smuggling routes across the U.S. border.
Last month, Nuevo Laredo's police chief was gunned down hours after taking office, and municipal police opened fire on a group of federal agents sent in to restore order, forcing President Vicente Fox's government to launch a purge of local officers.
Reacting to the shootouts Friday morning, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said federal efforts to stop the drug-related wave of violence in Nuevo Laredo have been successful despite the ongoing attacks and killings.
"This only encourages us to work with greater eagerness, using all the power of the state against organized crime," Aguilar said.
The attacks came two days after hundreds of municipal police officers began patrolling again and six weeks after they were pulled off the streets for background checks and drug testing.
Fallujah on the Rio Grand.
sure it wasn't in Camden, NJ ?
And of course, putting our military on the border would be racist.
NL Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
Time to send in General Pershing !
wow!!!
Pretty serious firepower from a country that doesn't allow citizens to own guns.
Ask the people of Nuevo Laredo pre-NAFTA what they think of NAFTA now. :/
SotB ping
I'm curious, how does NAFTA figure into this violence that is Nuevo Laredo? I'm thinking it has far more to do with drug lords and their attempt to take over Nuevo Laredo. Drug trafficking is not on the NAFTA agenda (at least I hope not!)
Free trade doesn't apply to gun fire.
July 29, 2005, 4:41PM
Drug cartels battle it out in Nuevo Laredo
Reuters News Service
NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- Rival drug cartel gunmen fired bazookas, tossed hand grenades and raked each other with machine gun fire in a battle at a home near the U.S. border, police said today.
The battle erupted late Thursday when a squad of about 30 masked men opened fire on a suspected drug cartel safe house on a residential street in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, blasting off its doors and strafing the facade with bullets.
Police and witnesses said six men trapped in the house returned fire in a gun battle that raged for 20 minutes, littering the street with spent cartridges and sending neighbors diving for cover, although no one was killed. Witnesses said at least three bazooka rounds were fired.
"I grabbed my daughter tight ... and we hid under the bed until the explosions stopped," one neighbor, who identified himself as Carlos, told Reuters as he gazed at the blasted facade of the single-story house.
Nuevo Laredo is a key hub for trade in goods and illegal drugs bound for Texas. It is currently in the grip of a war between powerful drug cartels seeking control of lucrative cocaine, marijuana and amphetamine smuggling routes.
At least 79 people, including 18 police officers, have been shot to death in the city this year in the battle between powerful and well-armed gangs from the western state of Sinaloa and the local Gulf cartel.
The U.S. State Department issued two warnings to American citizens traveling to Mexico this year. The caution was repeated this week by U.S. ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza, who singled out Nuevo Laredo as a crime black spot.
The sun-blasted city of 330,000 people has long been notorious for drug crime and kidnappings and last month suspected cartel hitmen killed the city's new police chief just hours after he was sworn in.
The government sent troops and federal police to take over Nuevo Laredo in the following days, although more than 20 people have since been shot dead.
The city's entire police force was suspended for investigations into the links between local police and the drug gangs. Officers from the purged municipal force only returned to duty this week, decked out in new black-and-white uniforms to distance them from their graft-tainted predecessors.
I would hope that GW Inc is approaching this problem with the same degree of paitence, accuracy and breath control that the rest of us will .....
......Before the violence spirals out of control, as it has in Colombia as a result of similar policies, Mr. Crespo said, Mexico should go back to pretending to fight an unwinnable war rather than fighting it in earnest.
"If the United States is not going to legalize drugs, then Mexico has to come to terms with the narcos," he said. "There were agreements in the past to let 80 percent of the drugs through, to allow some seizures for the Americans and for the media, and there was a lot less violence."
Mr. Fox said recently that is not an option......
....."Despite its intense law enforcement efforts, Mexico is the leading transit country for cocaine and a major producer of heroin, methamphetamine, and marijuana destined for U.S. markets," said the 2005 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.
Further, it acknowledged: "As a result of the huge traffic in drugs, Mexican criminal organizations dominate operations, controlling most of the thirteen primary drug distribution centers in the U.S. The violence of warring Mexican cartels has spilled over the border from Mexico to U.S. sites on the other side." ......
Mexico debates stepped-up drug war .. Click the link for the complete article.
Bbbbut these are just poor migrant daddies coming across the Rio Grande in order to feed their poor innocent starving children back home...
This is both sick and sad.
GW Inc. is not affected by illegal immigration. The wealthy and privileged elite have fences, electronic security, armored chauffeured driven limos and guards.
They simply don't care.
They don't have to go to a 7-11 that has 50 illegal alien criminals in the parking lot. Somebody else goes to the hardware store, buys the parts and fixes their busted toilets. Others, legal citizens mow their yards. They don't send their children to illegal alien criminal infested schools where spanish is the dominate language.
None of them care.
Guns; do we bury them or dig them up?
A MAJOR DRUG ROUTE....
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