Four killed in Mexico grenade attack on bar
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Four killed in Mexico grenade attack on bar
15 May 2006 16:44:52 GMT
Source: Reuters
MONTERREY, Mexico, May 15 (Reuters) - Suspected drug gang hitmen tossed two grenades into a Mexican bar and fired assault rifles at drinkers, killing four people in a normally peaceful state bordering Texas, authorities said on Monday.
Two men burst into the El Punto bar in San Nicolas, a working class town three hours drive south of the border in Nuevo Leon state early on Monday, wounding 25 people in the attack, state police spokesman Marcelo Garza said.
The attackers then fled the cantina, firing on a police patrol that arrived at the scene and littering the sidewalk with at least 35 spent cartridges.
Local television news showed images of bleeding patrons being wheeled from the bar on gurneys to waiting ambulances, while some of the walking wounded flagged down taxis on the darkened streets.
Tables were left overturned amid scattered bullet casings in the bar, while blast marks were clearly visible in the walls of the saloon.
"We think they were fragmentation grenades (and we found) two craters where presumably grenades exploded," Garza said.
Rival drug cartels have been battling for control of lucrative cocaine, marijuana and heroin smuggling routes to Texas from northeast Mexico in a bloody turf war which has killed hundreds of people in the past year.
Much of the violence has taken place in Nuevo Laredo, a city on the Texas border in neighboring Tamaulipas state, where at least 105 people have been shot to death this year.
In recent months, the violence has spread to Nuevo Leon. Last week, armed men shot dead a lawyer in the state capital Monterrey, and in February attackers gunned down the chief of police in a wealthy enclave of the industrial city.
San Nicolas Mayor Carlos de la Fuente said the district had been "exposed to the type of organized crime that has been occurring" elsewhere in the northeastern region.
Last year, President Vicente Fox declared "the mother of all battles" on drug cartels. He sent hundreds of troops and federal police to cities along the U.S.-Mexico border to restore order, although gang violence has continued regardless.
