The attack on the U.S. couple began with a car chase and ended in front of the main border crossing into El Paso, an area heavily patrolled by soldiers, local newspaper El Diario reported. The couple’s baby girl survived the attack.
The Mexican spouse was murdered in an upscale neighborhood of the city when gunmen boxed in his car with other vehicles and shot him, according to a local newspaper photographer who soon arrived at the scene.
The dead man’s wife, who was following in a second car, was unhurt, but their two children were wounded.
Calderon was already scheduled to visit Ciudad Juarez Tuesday, his third trip there in a month, as he scrambles to find a way to deal with a surge in killings that 8,000 troops and federal police on the ground have failed to curb.
The drug war has killed more than 4,600 people in the manufacturing city in two years, and constant scenes of bullet-ridden vehicles and bodies lying in pools of blood have prompted many middle-class residents to flee.
Across Mexico, drug violence is at its worst level ever, and many U.S. students have heeded warnings not to cross the border this year for their annual “spring break” vacation.
A burst of drug gang clashes killed at least 27 people, including four who were beheaded, this weekend around the Pacific resort of Acapulco.
At least 13 were killed on Saturday and at least 14 on Sunday, police said. They included nine men killed in a shootout and a young woman shot as she drove by in a taxi.
Obama voiced his support for Calderon’s drug war during a visit to Mexico last year, but the rising violence along the border with Mexico has become a big concern for Washington.
Nearly 19,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon came to power in Mexico in late 2006 and launched a military assault on the country’s powerful drug cartels, sparking a surge in violence that has alarmed Washington, foreign investors and tourists.
http://news.globaltv.com/world/Mexico+gunmen+kill+American+consulate+staff/2682366/story.html
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