CIUDAD JUAREZ: Suspected drug gang members launched a car bomb attack on police in Mexico`s border city of Ciudad Juarez for the first time, killing two police and two medics, a general said Friday.
The attack marked an escalation in Mexico`s brutal drug violence, which has left some 7,000 people dead so far this year, official figures showed Friday, compared with 9,000 killed in the whole of 2009.
Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes said that gang members had set a trap late Thursday using a wounded person dressed as a municipal police officer to lure federal police to a main intersection, before a car bomb exploded.
"The supposed police officer had his mouth open, and his hands tied behind his back, which is why medical workers approached him," Reyes said.
Police initially said that attackers had rammed a police convoy in Mexico`s murder capital.
General Eduardo Zarate said the attack left two policemen, a paramedic and a doctor dead, and wounded 11 others. It was not clear if one of the deceased was the decoy police officer.
"Residue from 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of an explosive known as C4 and the remnants of a mobile telephone device were found" near the burned-out cars and damaged buildings at the scene, Zarate told reporters.
Attacks between feuding drug gangs and with security forces mostly involve guns and grenades, as well as gruesome mutilations and beheadings.
Zarate said Thursday`s attack was the first car bombing in the city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas, and the first in Mexico directed at the police.
The city`s public security ministry said the attack had been in retaliation for the capture of Jesus Armando Acosta, a leader of La Linea gang, the armed wing of the city`s notorious Juarez cartel.
Acosta allegedly had taken part "in at least 25 executions of Sinaloa cartel members," the ministry said in a statement.
Most killings in the border city are attributed to disputes between the Juarez and Sinaloa gangs over control of lucrative trafficking routes into the United States.
Earlier Friday, Federal Attorney General Arturo Chavez insisted Mexico`s drug cartels were not involved in terrorism.
"We don`t have any evidence in the country of narcoterrorism as it has occurred in other countries," he told reporters in Mexico City.
He said that the objective of the Juarez attack had been "not to destabilize the state, but to frighten society."
A deadly grenade attack on a crowd of Independence Day revellers in the central city of Morelia aroused fears almost two years ago that drug gangs were turning to terrorism.
Almost 25,000 people have died in suspected drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on organized crime three and a half years ago, according to official figures released Friday.
A series of shootouts meanwhile paralyzed the northeastern border city of Nuevo Laredo for several hours on Friday, killing at least one and provoking scenes of panic, according to local media.
Exchanges of gunfire occurred in at least four parts of the city, and the attackers blocked some roads with buses and trucks.
Violence in that border city is blamed on battles between the Gulf Cartel and their former allies the Zetas.
BDST: 0925 HRS, 17 July 2010
