15 killed in Mexican car wash massacre

Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash Wednesday in a Mexican Pacific coast state where drug-gang violence has risen this year. It was the third massacre in Mexico in less than a week.

The gunmen in three vehicles drove up to the car wash in the city of Tepic and opened fire without provocation, said Fernando Carvajal, public safety secretary of Nayarit state, where the city is located. Fifteen men were killed and three people were injured.

The motive was not immediately clear but investigators suspect it was the work of organized crime, Mr. Carvajal told reporters.

He said most of the victims were recovering drug addicts and worked at the car wash. One victim, however, had just driven up to the business in a motorcycle and appeared not to have worked there, and another body was found at a nearby fruit stand.

Mr. Carvajal said the owners of the business have another car wash in the city where a man was killed Tuesday, and police were investigating whether the attacks were linked.

Nayarit Gov. Ney Gonzalez told Radio Formula that investigators believe some of the victims had been washing a stolen car.

President Felipe Calderon, speaking at a forum on security, called for a minute of silence for the victims of the Tepic attack and two other massacres that have occurred since Friday: an attack on a birthday party that killed 14 young people in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, and a shooting at a drug rehab centre in Tijuana that killed 13 recovering addicts.

The three attacks did not appear to be related. Such mass shootings have become increasingly common in Mexico, where drug-gang violence has surged in recent years.

Cartel-style violence has picked up this year in Nayarit, a small Pacific coast state wedged along drug trafficking route disputed by several drug gangs.

In April, 12 bodies, eight of them partially burned, were found in the fields outside the Nayarit town of Xalisco. Mr. Gonzalez, the governor, ordered schools to close early in June because of rising violence.


Drug gangs were blamed in the first two massacres.

In Tijuana, prosecutors say they are investigating whether the attack there was related to a record seizure of nearly 135 tons of marijuana last week. Shortly after the attack, a voice was heard over a police radio frequency threatening that there would be as many as 135 killings in Tijuana — a possible reference to the government's pot haul.

In Ciudad Juarez, investigators said two men found dead Tuesday — one of them decapitated — might have been involved in the birthday party massacre Friday night. A note left with the bodies accused the men of killing women and children. The victims of the party attack ranged from 13 to 32 years old and included six women and girls.

In other bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez, gunmen killed three undercover Mexican federal police officers as they waited for a person to cross a bridge from El Paso, Texas, authorities said Wednesday.

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Mexico police killed as wave of violence continues


At least nine Mexican police officers have been shot and killed in an ambush on their convoy in western Jalisco state - the sixth multiple killing in Mexico in less than a week.

Earlier, five women in Ciudad Juarez were killed when buses taking them home from work were ambushed by gunmen.

In Mexico City, six youths were shot dead in what police say may have been a gang-related feud.

Mexico is suffering a wave of violence, mostly linked to the drugs trade.
Continue reading the main story

The 20 officers in the convoy in Jalisco were on patrol when they were attacked by gunmen in at least 10 sport utility vehicles, said a police statement.

Nine officers were killed, while a 10th is still missing.
Violence spreading

Separately, at least five people were injured in grenade attacks in a suburb of Guadelajara, the state capital of Jalisco.

Two of those wounded were toddlers, reported the Associated Press news agency, and a third was a 17-year-old girl.

The killings in Mexico City may have been drug-related, said Miguel Angel Mancera of the attorney-general's office, but there had also been disputes between local car-jacking gangs.

The Tepito district, just north of Mexico City's historic centre, is a poor neighbourhood with a high crime rate.

The young men were standing outside a shop in the middle of the night when gunmen approached and opened fire before escaping in a car.

However, mass shootings are rare in the capital.

"We would like to reassure the population that we are going to find those responsible," Mr Mancera said.

The killings have raised concerns that the drug-related violence raging in the northern border states and some other regions of Mexico is coming to the capital.

"Massacres have arrived in the federal district," declared the newspaper El Universal.

The latest killings in Ciudad Juarez, a border city at the heart of the drugs conflict, do not appear to be drug-related.

Gunmen opened fire indiscriminately on three buses carrying female factory workers back from a shift at a plant making car parts.

- At least 14 others were wounded in the attack, with some in a critical condition.

- Some 28,000 people have died in drugs-related violence in Mexico since 2006.

- More than 7,000 people have died in the violence in 2010 - making it the bloodiest year since President Felipe Calderon dispatched some 50,000 troops to take on the drug cartels over the past four years.


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Argentina buries former leader Nestor Kirchner

Former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner has been buried in his home town of Rio Gallegos.

Thousands of people waving flags joined the funeral procession led by his widow, current President Cristina Fernandez, before a private ceremony.

Earlier, huge crowds lined the streets of Buenos Aires in pouring rain to salute his coffin.

Mr Kirchner's sudden death on Wednesday has provoked an outpouring of emotion in Argentina.

The former president, who was 60, died of a heart attack

His body was flown to Rio Gallegos in Patagonia in the far south of Argentina after lying in state in Buenos Aires.
National mourning

People queued for hours to pay tribute at the wake in the presidential palace in the capital.

His grieving widow was joined there by other South American leaders, including Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Huge crowds turned out to bid farewell to Mr Kirchner's coffin as it was taken to the airport to be flown to Rio Gallegos.

Waving flags and placards, mourners chanted and wept as the funeral cortege moved slowly through the rain-swept avenues of Buenos Aires.

The former president, who ran the country from 2003 to 2007, was his wife's chief political strategist after she succeeded him, and was also secretary general of the South American regional grouping, Unasur.

He had been expected to run for president again in the 2011 election.

Mr Kirchner had suffered health problems and had a heart operation last month but nevertheless his death shocked many in Argentina, where three days of national mourning are being observed.

The country's football matches this weekend have been called off.

Mr Kirchner served as mayor of Rio Gallegos before becoming governor of the wider region - the oil and gas-rich province of Santa Cruz.

He became president as Argentina was emerging from a profound political and economic crisis and oversaw the country's return to relative stability and prosperity.

Mr Kirchner also supported the prosecution of those responsible for human rights abuses under military rule in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was a polarising figure, very popular among the trade unions and in the industrial belt around Buenos Aires and deeply unpopular among the wealthy.

He and his wife had faced some criticism for appearing to get around the constitutional limit on two consecutive terms.

Just as Mr Kirchner stood aside for his wife in 2007, it was widely thought Mrs Fernandez would step back and allow her husband to run in the October 2011 election.


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¿Son los estudiantes un peligro para México?

Con profunda indignación nos enteramos que en Ciudad Juárez la Policía Federal disparó contra una manifestación de estudiantes, hiriendo a un alumno de sociología de la Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez y violando la autonomía del campus.

Repudiamos enérgicamente estos actos contra la libertad de expresión y preguntamos al gobierno federal: ¿los estudiantes que nos movilizamos por un futuro, por incrementar los recursos a la educación, a la cultura somos un peligro para México? ¿Los jóvenes que se manifiestan por la paz, como en Ciudad Juárez, y contra los abusos de la policía y el Ejército contra la población civil son un peligro para México? Qué razón tiene Elena Poniatowska cuando el viernes en la explanada de Rectoría afirmó que la situación que afronta hoy la juventud es "peor que en el 68".

Redes Universitarias expresa su solidaridad con el movimiento social de Ciudad Juárez y exige al gobierno federal garantizar el respeto a la libre manifestación de ideas y a la autonomía de nuestras universidades.

Informes: redesuniversitarias@gmail.com y http://redesuniversitarias.blogia.com

Estudiantes de la UNAM, UAM, UACM, IPN y Ciudad Juárez


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Video: balean a estudiantes de la UACJ durante la manifestacion