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IED's Among Weapons Seized in Laredo Raids
Improvised explosive devices, the home made bombs which have killed and maimed so many U.S. troops in Iraq, were among the items seized in three raids in the Texas border city of Laredo, federal officials said today.

Julie Myers, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters here today that the raids at three homes in Laredo, on January 12, January 27, and yesterday, seized stacks of automatic weapons, grenades, gunpowder, ammunition, and drugs, as well as IEDs.

"We seized two improvised explosive devices, as well as materials designed to make 43 more," Myers said.

She says a total of six people have been arrested in the three raids, and the investigations are continuing.

"This is the first instance that we're aware of that we have found the IEDs," she said. "It is disconcerting to us to see the trends from assault weapons to IEDs."

Even though IEDs are most commonly connected to the insurgency in Iraq, Myers says there is no connection that Middle Eastern or jihadist terrorists were behind these devices. She says it appears to be an uptick in weaponry used in the bloody year long war between the Gulf Cartel and the Federation, two Mexican gangs fighting for control of what's called 'The Plaza,' the lucrative drug and immigrant smuggling routes into the southwestern United States.

"Witnesses tell us and it does look like the weapons seized were headed to Mexico, so it does support the idea that this involves the violence between the cartels," she said.

Officials said they did not know the capacity of the IED's to do violence, saying only they had 'the capacity to kill.'

But Myers and other law enforcement officials, like Laredo Police Chief Augustin Dovalina, said they are worried about the new firepower being brought to bear by the drug cartels.

"As a law enforcement officer I'm very concerned about major devices that would cause major damage or injury," Dovalina said. He said right now, the bulk of the violence among the drug cartels is taking place on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

"We are dong the best that we can to keep the violence from spreading over to our side, the American side."

But if the violence is remaining in Mexico, many of the perpetrators of the violence are in the US. Officials say two men wanted in connection with drug war murders in Nuevo Laredo was arrested last October in Rockwall Texas, near Dallas.

Myers said the stacks of weapons seized in the three raids have been very impressive, including six kits to assemble machine guns, at least twenty assembled firearms, magazines, silencers, thousands of rounds of ammunition, as well as quantities of cocaine, marijuana, and the fast growing drug methamphetamine.