Consulate killings in Mexico linked to gangs

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico | Suspected drug gangsters chased down and opened fire on two white SUVs carrying families of U.S. consular employees from a children’s party, killing three adults and injuring two children in this violent border city, officials said Monday.

An infant in a car seat survived a burst of bullets that killed her American parents.

The FBI announced it was aiding Mexico’s federal Attorney General’s Office in probing the slayings, which alarmed both the White House and Mexico’s presidency as the surging bloodshed along Mexico’s border struck the families of U.S. government employees.

Mexican authorities put suspicion on the Aztecas street gang — a group allied with the “La Linea” enforcement arm of the Juarez drug cartel. They said that was based on “information exchanged with U.S. federal agencies.”

All three victims had attended a children’s party hosted by another consular employee shortly before the attacks, said FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons in El Paso, Texas.

“There is no information that the victims were specifically targeted” because of their work with the U.S. Consulate, she said, though the investigation is continuing.

Both the American couple and the Mexican man who was killed were traveling in similar vehicles — white sport utility vehicles.

The U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, shut for Monday’s Mexican national holiday, also will be closed Tuesday as “a way for the community to mourn the loss” of the victims, said consulate spokesman Silvio Gonzalez. It was the second U.S. border consulate closed because of violence in the last month. The consular office in Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, closed for several days in late February because of gunbattles in the area.

Several U.S. citizens have been killed in Mexico’s drug war, most of them people with family ties to Mexico. It is very rare for American government employees to be targeted, although attackers hurled grenades at the U.S. Consulate in the northern city of Monterrey in 2008.

The atmosphere of violence in Juarez had been creeping closer to U.S. offices for some time: On Friday, the consulate put a bar just around the block from its office off-limits to U.S. government personnel owing to “security concerns.”

The State Department authorized U.S. government employees at Ciudad Juarez and five other U.S. consulates in northern Mexico to send family members out of the area because of concerns about rising drug violence. The cities are Tijuana, Nogales, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and Matamoros.

The dependents — estimated to be several hundred — will get a 30-day special housing allowance, which could be renewed for additional periods.

State Department spokesman Fred Lash said the decision was based not only on Saturday’s killings, but also on a wider pattern of violence and threats in northern Mexico in recent weeks. The State Department noted the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City has advised American citizens to delay unnecessary travel to parts of the Mexican states of Durango, Coahuila and Chihuahua.

The consulate employee and her husband, both U.S. citizens, were killed in their car near the Santa Fe International bridge linking Ciudad Juarez with El Paso.

The woman was shot in the head, while her husband suffered wounds in his neck and arm. Their baby, who appeared to be about 1 year old, was found unharmed in the back seat, said Vladimir Tuexi, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state prosecutors office.

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