Mexico blames drug cartel for deadly car bomb
CIUDAD JUAREZ |
In the first attack of its kind in Mexico's drug war, the explosion tore through a major intersection in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, Texas, late on Thursday, damaging nearby buildings and sending flames into the air.
Federal police blamed La Linea, the armed wing of the powerful Juarez cartel, for the attack and Mexico's Security Ministry said it was retaliation for the arrest this week of a Juarez cartel member.
"There were 10 kilos (22 pounds) of explosives, activated from a distance by a cell phone," said Enrique Torres, an army spokesman in Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing center that has become one of the world's deadliest cities over the past 2 1/2 years.
TV images showed the wreck of a car with just one front wheel intact and two federal police vehicles charred and on fire after the blast in the city's downtown area.
The army said C4 plastic explosive was used in the attack, which killed a policeman, a doctor, a rescue worker and an unidentified man.
Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said drug gangs set up an elaborate trap in which a wounded man dressed as a city police officer was dumped on the street as bait. The assailants then called emergency services to lure federal police to the scene and detonated the bomb as they arrived, the mayor told a news conference.
President Felipe Calderon is battling surging violence across Mexico after launching his military-backed crackdown on drug gangs in December 2006. More than 26,000 people have been killed.
The violence is worrying Washington and some investors in the oil-producing country with an emerging economy once known for its political stability next door to the United States.
Twelve people, including two civilians, died in shootouts between the army and drug gangs in Nuevo Laredo across from Texas on Friday, underscoring the challenges facing Mexico's new interior minister, Jose Francisco Blake, appointed by Calderon this week.
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