Mexico: Narco-Violence Near U.S. Border; Private Plane Stolen from Americans

No Comments | April 17th, 2008 | Trackback

The U.S. State Department reissued its travel alert for Mexico citing extensive violent criminal activity in northern areas near the U.S. border. The violence is driven by drug cartels fighting over the narcotics trade. Attacks usually target cartel members, police, criminal justice officials and journalists, but foreign visitors and residents, including Americans, have been kidnapped or killed in border areas. Military troops have been deployed in various places around the country and conflicts with the cartels “have escalated to levels equivalent to military small-unit combat and have included use of machine guns and fragmentation grenades.” These confrontations have occurred in many cities and towns in the north including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez. In another incident, a U.S. family flying a small private plane were blocked from takeoff at a hotel airstrip in the Baja California beach town of Mulege, forced out at gunpoint, and left to watch as the thieves flew off with the plane. Such aircraft are used by the drug cartels for smuggling.