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TIJUANA - Hitmen from Mexico's drug gangs are breaking traditional codes of honour by killing children in a chilling new chapter of a narcotics war that President Felipe Calderon is struggling to control.
In unprecedented attacks, gunmen killed a 3-year-old boy and 9-year-old girl and seriously wounded a 12-year-old girl in the city of Tijuana on the United States border last week as they targeted a senior local police officer.
Even hardened residents of Tijuana, where more than 300 people were killed in drug violence last year and severed heads were dumped on city streets, were shocked by photos of young Jose Luis Ortiz' body riddled with bullets.
"How much longer must we wait for results from the military? Now the narcos are killing our children," said a Tijuana shop assistant who gave her name only as Fernanda.
Ortiz and his mother and father were shot to death as they slept. Gunmen apparently mistook the boy's father for a police officer and had no qualms about killing the 3-year-old.
Moments later, they found the police officer they were looking for and murdered him, his wife and their youngest daughter. Their other child was wounded.
"This is a new strategy to attack children and families and respond to the Government's military assault on the cartels. The gangs want to sow panic and fear to overwhelm the authorities," said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at San Diego State University.
Over the past three decades, Mexican drug cartels hauling cocaine north to the US have generally held to a code of honour that bans killing women and children and stops them from becoming addicted to the drugs they traffic.
As the cartels feud over smuggling routes and fight troops and federal police, violence has escalated and many traffickers are now addicts.
On Friday, gunmen and more than 100 police and soldiers fought a three-hour battle outside a kindergarten in central Tijuana in which one man died and two police officers were seriously wounded.
After overpowering several gunmen in a house, police found the bodies of six suspected rivals who had been abducted and executed.
Dozens of children were evacuated from the kindergarten, many carried away by armed soldiers.
Police said among those arrested was a man they believe is a top killer for the Tijuana cartel, known also as the Arellano Felix gang.
Mexico's main drug struggle is between the Gulf Cartel on the eastern coast and an alliance headed by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, a jail escaper.
Calderon has made crushing the drug cartels a priority since taking office a year ago, sending 25,000 soldiers and police to attack the gangs, but the shootouts continue.
"The corruption among the state's police forces runs so deep that it is impeding our work," said General Sergio Aponte, joint head of military operations in Baja California.
- REUTERS
