Mexican President heads to ‘deadly’ city

MEXICAN President Felipe Calderon headed to his country’s most violent city yesterday after deadly attacks on US consular staff and their families upped the ante in his battle against drug gangs.

Calderon’s third visit to Ciudad Juarez this year followed the drive-by murders of an American employee of the US consulate, her husband, and the husband of a Mexican consular employee in a separate attack at the weekend.

US Ambassador to Mexico Carlos Pascual was accompanying Calderon as the latest attacks drew the northern neighbour further into Mexico’s gang war for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes to the United States and beyond.

Mexican authorities blamed the murders on “the Aztecas”, a gang linked to the powerful Juarez drug cartel, as US FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents rushed to Ciudad Juarez.

The border city of 1.3 million people, across from El Paso, Texas, is at the heart of Calderon’s controversial clampdown on organised crime, which has seen some 50,000 troops deployed countrywide.

More than 15,000 people have died in the surge in drug-related violence since Calderon took office at the end of 2006, including more than 2,600 last year alone in Ciudad Juarez.

Investigators said it was still unclear why the US consulate-linked victims were singled out by hit teams who ambushed the two family groups just minutes apart Saturday after they left a birthday party.

“It could be a mistaken identity, it could be that they were targeted; we don’t know at this point,” said Andrea Simmons of the FBI’s El Paso, Texas, office.

The victims were identified as Lesley Enriquez, an American working at the consulate; her American husband, Arthur Redelfs; and Jorge Alberto Sarcido, the Mexican husband of another consular employee.

US President Barack Obama said he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by the killings.

Police on Monday also located the charred van that they believed was used by the killers.

The daylight attacks put Ciudad Juarez under a heightened glare of attention only two months after the gruesome massacre on January 31 of 15 youths at a party there.

After those killings, Calderon launched social programmes in a bid to restore some normalcy to the city from which hundreds have fled in recent months.

Last weekend, suspected drug attacks claimed more than 100 lives across Mexico.