Drug Gang, Police Battle For 5 Hours In Tijuana

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 4, 2008; A13

MEXICO CITY, March 3 -- Mexican soldiers and federal police fought a five-hour gun battle with suspected drug gang hit men late Sunday and early Monday in a residential area of Tijuana. At least one of the heavily armed suspects was killed and two were injured, authorities said.

The confrontation was the latest in a series of street battles that have terrorized the border city, where rival drug cartels also turn their weapons on each other. In January, another residential neighborhood was paralyzed by a three-hour gun battle that prompted the evacuation of a preschool and ended with the discovery of six dead kidnapping victims inside a cartel safe house.

Monday's battle took place in Tijuana's La Mesa neighborhood, a troubled area where the police commander was killed in January, a spokesman for the Baja California public safety agency told reporters. Federal police and soldiers were conducting an operation to shut down a suspected cartel safe house. Local police, many of whom are suspected of helping cartels, did not take part.

Soldiers and police began exchanging gunfire with the suspects at about 10 p.m. Sunday and fought through the night. At least 200 soldiers cordoned off several blocks during the battle, authorities said. Horrified neighbors told local news media that they hid inside their homes until the shooting stopped at about 3 a.m.

In Tijuana, two powerful drug gangs -- the Arellano Felix cartel and the Sinaloa cartel -- have been fighting over control of smuggling routes. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dispatched hundreds of troops and federal police to the city to confront the cartels.

In Monday's shootout, authorities appeared to make new use of a strategy initiated after Calderon took office, according to Jorge Chabat, a Mexico City-based drug expert. Rather than focusing primarily on nabbing kingpins, Chabat said in an interview, soldiers also are attacking the safe houses that serve as refuges for hit squads and are trying to disrupt street operations of smugglers.

"There's a bigger focus on gathering intelligence," Chabat said. "But the narcos are responding with violence, and we're going to probably see a lot more of these street fights because the narcos have big numbers of assassins on their side."