Pubdate: Sun, 27 Apr 2008
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Page: Front Page, Top of Page
Copyright: 2008 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Authors: Marla Dickerson and Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
Note: Dickerson reported from Mexico City, Marosi from Tijuana. Times 
staff writer Reed Johnson contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Tijuana
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Felipe+Calderon
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Mexico (Mexico)

13 DIE AS GUN BATTLES JOLT TIJUANA

A Running Firefight Between Apparent Drug Rivals Leaves a Trail of 
Bodies and Spent Shell Casings Across the City.

TIJUANA -- In one of the most violent eruptions in the ongoing border 
drug war, suspected traffickers clashed on the streets of Tijuana 
early Saturday morning in a wild and bloody shootout that left 13 
people dead and eight others injured in a series of moving gun battles.

Gunmen began firing on each other with rifles and automatic weapons 
in a light industrial area east of the city, according to 
authorities, leaving a trail of corpses, spent shell casings and 
bullet-riddled vehicles across Tijuana as the triggermen gave chase 
to one another.

A security guard patrolling the parking lot of a convenience store 
near the initial confrontation on Boulevard Insurgentes, a major 
thoroughfare, said the gun battle there raged for at least 10 minutes.

The petrified watchman said he hit the pavement and didn't rise until 
long after the shooting had stopped. When it was over, he said, he 
saw abandoned vehicles, scattered weapons, broken glass, a 
blood-soaked bulletproof vest and several corpses, including one with 
its head nearly blown off.

It sounded like a war, he said. "I thank God that I'm OK."

The shootout is just the latest in a spasm of drug-related violence 
that has gripped the border town this year. In the first four months 
of 2008, Tijuana has seen dozens of kidnappings, assaults and 
homicides, including children gunned down in the mayhem.

The violence has had a major economic effect on the city's tourism 
business and underscores the larger drug problem facing the Mexican government.

The motive for Saturday's bloodshed was unclear. Police said it could 
have been a falling-out between factions of the Arellano Felix 
narcotics cartel, which has long controlled the drug trade in the 
city. Or it could be another cartel trying to move in on its turf.

Some speculate that the killings may have been revenge by traffickers 
against suspected informants.

Still, experts said the recent surge in violence undoubtedly is 
linked to a major offensive by authorities against organized-crime 
drug traffickers, an operation that has strained delicate alliances 
between traffickers who had previously cooperated with one another in 
the lucrative narcotics trade.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in cooperation with state and 
local authorities, has sent hundreds of soldiers and federal police 
to Tijuana and other trafficking hot spots this year.

Results have been mixed. Although the operation has resulted in 
several high-profile arrests and seizures of drugs and weapons 
caches, organized crime has responded with ferocity to intimidate 
informants and police and to punish rivals suspected of betraying them.

"They are under pressure and turning on each other," said Agustin 
Perez Aguilar, spokesman for the public safety department of Baja 
California state. "We hope we have a lot more events" like Saturday's.

Some residents and tourists may not agree. The violence has 
terrorized Tijuana and other cities, where cartel hit men have all 
but abandoned traditional codes of honor, with brazen daylight 
attacks and assassinations of children.

In January, gunmen stormed the home of Tijuana Deputy Police Chief 
Margarito Saldana Rivera, killing him, his wife and two daughters, 
the youngest age 12. A couple and their 3-year-old son were slain the 
same week in what was believed to have been a case of mistaken identity.

City Hall was evacuated earlier this year because of a bomb threat.

Public shootouts have sent pedestrians scrambling for cover and 
pinned residents in their homes for hours, and tourism has plunged as 
fearful U.S. day trippers steer clear of the city's shops, 
restaurants and night life.

The situation in Tijuana has grown particularly volatile after a 
Mexican general last week publicly identified about three dozen 
local, state and federal law enforcement officers who he alleges are 
in league with organized crime.

Gen. Sergio Aponte Polito made the claims in an open letter to the 
Tijuana daily newspaper Frontera. The explosive charges have caused 
such a rift between various levels of law enforcement that Calderon 
ordered Aponte, the Baja state governor, its attorney general and its 
secretary of public safety to fly to the capital yesterday to meet 
with the federal secretary of Defense and secretary of Federal Public 
Security, according to Perez.

"They were called by Calderon to settle their differences," Perez 
said at a news conference.

The prospect of infighting among the cartels and within law 
enforcement has some observers worried about the unintended 
consequences of the recent crackdown and whether the violence it has 
unleashed can now be contained.

Still, Calderon's efforts have generally been popular with the 
Mexican public. And they reflect a heightened level of commitment by 
the federal government to neutralize criminals and weed out corrupt 
public officials and police, said David Shirk, director of the 
Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

"Even though it's bloody, even though it's costly, people like the 
fact that the government's standing up," Shirk said.

After Saturday's shootouts, law enforcement officials said they 
recovered 54 weapons, 21 vehicles, 45 magazines of heavy-caliber 
ammunition and 1,500 spent shells at five locations around Tijuana.

A resident who lives near the site of the initial confrontation on 
Boulevard Insurgentes said the ground appeared to be paved with spent 
shells after the shooting ended.

Surveying the carnage after it was all over, he said he was struck by 
how young and heavily armed some of the victims were. He said one 
fallen gunman had a revolver in each hand, an AK-47 slung over his 
shoulder and an AR-15 rifle at his side.

"He was very well-armed, but it didn't save him," the man said. 
"There were just too many attackers."