Mexican Officials: Car Bomb used in Attack on Police

VOA News
July 16, 2010 at 11:23 pm

Authorities in Mexico say a drug cartel used a car bomb to target police in the Ciudad Juarez border area, marking the first attack of its kind in the country’s drug war.

Officials made the assessment Friday, one day after the explosion tore through a major intersection in Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas. Authorities say the attack killed four people, two of them police officers, and that the bomb might have been detonated remotely with a cell phone.

Graffiti scrawled on a wall near the blast warned of more car bombs.

Federal police believe the attack was in retaliation for the arrest Thursday of Jesus Armando Acosta Guerrero, a senior gang member linked to the Juarez drug cartel.

Juarez, in Chihuahua state, is Mexico’s most violent city, and has been on the front lines of President Felipe Calderon’s crackdown on drug cartels.

President Calderon has deployed thousands of soldiers nationwide to fight drug gangs since taking office in 2006. At least 23,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since the president began cracking down on the cartels. Some information in this story was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.