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Police chief killed in Mexico drug war city

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 March 2006, 17:39 CST

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen with assault rifles killed a police chief on Tuesday in a shootout that left two others dead in this crime-ridden city on the U.S.-Mexican border, police said.

Victor Berrones, head of one of several police forces in the northern state of Tamaulipas, was gunned down when he went to the aid of a patrol car ambushed on a busy road in broad daylight, state police spokesman Hector Ovalle told Reuters.

He said another police officer and a man dressed in civilian clothes, who may have been one of the attackers, also died. Earlier, police sources and witnesses said four people died in the clash, including a deputy head of a state police force.

The killings took place in broad daylight on a highway leading to the airport in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas.

It was the latest murder of a senior policeman in the city, despite Mexican President Vicente Fox sending hundreds of troops and police last year to quell a drug feud.

The policemen and their attackers fought for 15 minutes in a shootout that spilled over into an auto dealership and left bodies strewn on the ground.

Ovalle said the attackers traveled in sport utility vehicles and fired assault rifles on the patrol car, which called for help over the radio.

More than 40 people have been killed in Nuevo Laredo this year in a fight over smuggling routes between the local Gulf cartel and an alliance of drug traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa.

The city's public security chief Alejandro Dominguez was shot dead in June, hours after taking office. That murder prompted the government to increase security forces in Nuevo Laredo and suspend the entire municipal police force while the government investigated alleged links between police and drug cartels.

Source: REUTERS

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