Thread: Gunmen abduct 6 from hotels in northern Mexico

Gunmen abduct 6 from hotels in northern Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Dozens of gunmen burst into a Holiday Inn and another hotel in the northern industrial city of Monterrey on Wednesday and abducted at least six people, prosecutors said.

Nuevo Leon state attorney general Alejandro Garza y Garza said that between 20 and 30 gunmen abducted four guests and a receptionist from the Holiday Inn. The assailants searched at least seven rooms before going to the nearby Hotel Mision where they abducted a receptionist, he said.

Garza y Garza said the gunmen had with them a handcuffed man who had apparently led them to the Holiday Inn.

Those abducted included three male guests who registered at the Holiday Inn as being from Mexico City and a woman who said she was from the border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.

Organized crime was likely behind the attacks, the state attorney general said. The gunmen appeared to be looking for specific targets.

"A lot of what we're going through right now is part of a readjustment among cartels," Garza y Garza told a news conference in Monterrey.

Still, it was not clear exactly what motivated the abductions or who the victims were.

Local media reported that the gunmen hijacked several trucks and used them to block streets near the hotel during the raid. But Garza y Garza said police were still investigating that.

He said the attackers stole a computer containing the Holiday Inn's hotel registry and the hotel's security videos.

The U.S. Consulate in Monterrey denied media reports that an American woman had been kidnapped from the Holiday Inn, and it repeated warnings to U.S. citizens to be wary of violence in Nuevo Leon state.

Violence by battling drug cartels has become increasingly intrusive in Monterrey, where drug cartels have tried to confound police and soldiers by blockading roads with stolen, sometimes-burning vehicles. Authorities say the violence is the result of a split between the Gulf cartel and its former ally, the Zetas drug gang.

On March 19, two university students were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen and soldiers outside the gates of their campus.

Since those shootings, at least three U.S. universities have suspended their exchange studies programs in Monterrey.

In one wealthy suburb on Monterrey, the mayor created a group of private crime fighters, unaffiliated with police and paid with donations by local businessmen — a security force he now says will be disbanded.

Mayor Mauricio Fernandez of San Pedro Garza Garcia said the group was "smeared" by allegations it might itself be involved in illegal activities.

He previously said the group would perform "rough work, I would call it cleansing" and suggested it might operate outside the law.

Elsewhere, police found the bound bodies of two men in the Mexican city of Cuernavaca, alongside a banner that threatened to kill 25 more drug cartel members.

Police said the killings are part of a battle between traffickers Hector Beltran Leyva and U.S.-born Edgar Valdez Villarreal, known as "La Barbie."

Cuernavaca police said the bodies were found early Wednesday outside a bar.

A message left near the cadavers said 25 of Beltran Leyva's henchmen are being held and interrogated in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco and would be executed soon.

State police reported that three men were found shot to death Tuesday in a taxi in Acapulco. It was unclear whether they were related to the drug dispute.

In the border city of Tijuana, the Mexican army seized about 19 tons of marijuana that was packed and ready to be shipped north of the border, Gen. Alfonso Duarte said Wednesday.

An estimated 22,700 people have been killed in Mexico's drug war since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a U.S.-backed military crackdown on drug cartels.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100422/ap_ ... war_mexico

What we see happening in Mexico with the Sinaloa, Gulf, Breeze, Tijuana and other cartels now being run by the ruthless Zetas will be commonplace in this country because of the wide open southwest border allowing the violence to spill across it and spread it's tentacles throughout every part of this country.