Posted on 04/26/2008 9:36:42 PM PDT by Ladycalif
By Lizbeth Diaz
TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Seventeen 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 narco-war.
Rival factions of the 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. Two more men died in hospital on Saturday evening, police said.
Six men were wounded and another six were arrested, but some gang members are thought to have escaped.
Two of the dead were believed to be senior hitmen for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by 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.
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.
Police cordoned off 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 after 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 after 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 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.
(Writing by Robin Emmott; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
Now that sounds like a stunned beeber ping list time
Tijuana is a hell hole.
Mexico shows signs of lapsing into what it became after 1910.
so it would seem
Cry me a river...
At times such practices have gone to the extreme. In 1989, Mark Kilroy, a 21-year-old U.S. pre-med student, was kidnapped off a busy street in Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas. The mutilated remains of Kilroy and 14 young men, were later found on a Mexican ranch. The victims had been boiled alive, castrated, slashed and shot, their brains and hearts cut out of their bodies.
Drug smugglers who carried out the satanic ritual believed the sacrifices would give them supernatural protection from the law.
I’ll donate $100 for more ammo.
What's your take on keeping them in that ready state? I have heard of mag springs losing their push up strength in long term storage... I have mags in that ready state that have been so for 8 years, and upon using them at the range had no feeder problems at all.
Your thoughts?
Fixed...
‘Seventeen Mexican drug gang members were killed near the U.S. border”
Sounds like a good start.
Good start indeed
That's a myth from people who don't think. Springs wear out due to metal fatigue from continued compression/decompression.
A compressed gun magazine spring is no different from a car's suspension spring.
Do we jack up our car every night when we get home?
So, no down side. Win-Win situation.
Great way to look at it! As I said, I still have “multiple” mags, in many calibers, that have been at the ready for years. A fella down at the rifle range tried to convince me mag springs that are never decompressed would fail to feed at some point in time... I disproved his posit when my old mags performed flawlessly...
I know youweren’t talking to me, but I have a personal story on that one. A friend of mine inherited her fathers 1911 Colt. She had no desire to have a gun in the home so she gave it to me, take it, shoot it, if you like it, pay me 100 bucks. A good (not great) condition 1911 for 100 bucks with a liberal try out period? Im in.
Several days later, my cat knocked over a lamp and broke a window on the first floor of my house. I was in the cellar and grabbed the 1911, cocking it in the same action. didn’t close the chamber all the way...pulled the action, spent a few seconds dumping the round on the floor and recocked, closed fine.
After discovering what had happened, I picked up the bullet that I keep in my drawer to this day. Looks like the back of the bullet made it into the chamber on time, but the front didn’t. The bullet was pushed back into the casing my a solid .75cm.
Why did this happen? The spring was weak and failed to push the bullet into the chamber before the slide came back.
Gave the gun back and bough a mint Taurus .45. I keep seven in the mag to keep the spring right. If I need more than seven bullets to fend off an attacker, I should have spent more time at the range.
That is my lesson on spring tension. Take it or leave it. I took it.
No, but over time a cars suspension springs wear down and the car lowers itself. Read my last reply.
I read your other post and I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
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