AT LEAST 18 PEOPLE KILLED IN MEXICO ATTACK
At least 18 people have been killed after armed men stormed into a drug treatment centre in northern Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juarez, security officials say.
Source: The Agencies
- The men entered the facility and attacked 23 people, killing 18 and leaving five more wounded, a source in the public security department told the AFP news agency.
- "There could be more bodies," the source said.
- He said the dead were found near a small area of an entranceway to the centre.
- Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, is the bloodiest stage for an ongoing turf war between Mexican drug cartels battling for the right to control the trafficking of drugs across the northern border.
- The US is the world's largest market for cocaine and marijuana.
- Last year in a similar attack, eight people were killed at a Mexican clinic that treats drug addicts.
MEXICO THE NEXT IRAQ OR AFGANISTAN ?
Nineteen tunnels were discovered beneath the United States' southwest border in 2007, surpassing the previous record of 17 set in 2006, federal authorities said.
The Obama administration may have announced its $700 million plan to help the Mexican government fight the powerful drug cartels, but the cartels have already geared up for a battle undergoing a "transition from the gansterism of traditional narco hit men to paramilitary terrorism with guerilla tactics," according to a confidential federal law enforcement assessment obtained by ABC News.
"We have a criminal insurgency by organized crime that may well be a precursor to civil anarchy in part or all of Mexico," warns the assessment.U.S. officials tell ABC News that President Obama has been told the Mexican cartels have become a criminal insurgency, threatening to turn Mexico into an Iraq or Afghanistan.
The po
werful drug cartels have increased their use of paramilitary terrorism with guerilla tactics, including car bombs, grenades and roadside IED's.
"There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border and it's stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq," said ABC News counterterrorism consultant Richard Clarke.
"We have to do something now along the border, but just doing these little things that the administration announced today won't solve the problem in the long term," said Clarke.
Just last month, 15 to 20 masked gunmen in Durango, Mexico, raided the work site of a U.S. company and stole over 900 pounds of water gel explosives and detonators. Authorities are increasingly worried that these types of thefts will be on the rise and that the cartels will use the explosives to manufacture IEDs and other types of devices.
werful drug cartels have increased their use of paramilitary terrorism with guerilla tactics, including car bombs, grenades and roadside IED's."There is in fact an insurgency on both sides of the American-Mexican border and it's stepped up a lot in the last several years because the Bush administration ignored it and put its focus on Iraq," said ABC News counterterrorism consultant Richard Clarke.
"We have to do something now along the border, but just doing these little things that the administration announced today won't solve the problem in the long term," said Clarke.
Just last month, 15 to 20 masked gunmen in Durango, Mexico, raided the work site of a U.S. company and stole over 900 pounds of water gel explosives and detonators. Authorities are increasingly worried that these types of thefts will be on the rise and that the cartels will use the explosives to manufacture IEDs and other types of devices.
Courtesy: ABC News
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