Mexico police chief murder linked to border tunnel
04 Dec 2007 17:53:57 GMT Source: Reuters
By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico, Dec 4 (Reuters - Gunmen killed the police chief of a Mexican city bordering California on Tuesday by shooting him some 50 times in an apparent revenge attack after police found a drug-smuggling tunnel under the border. Gunmen broke into the house of Tecate police chief Juan Soriano in the early hours of the morning and shot him repeatedly in the face and torso as he slept in bed with his wife, an official at the Baja California state attorney general's office told Reuters. His wife was not hit. The killing of Soriano, who had started his job only last week, appeared to be an act of revenge against Mexican police, who on Monday discovered a tunnel nearly a mile (1.6 km) long running into California from Tecate near the Pacific coast after a tip-off from the U.S. Border Patrol. "As soon as Soriano made public the discovery of the tunnel, he went home and hours later, they executed him in his bedroom," said the official, who requested anonymity. Police also found two tonnes of marijuana in a vehicle near the tunnel, which ran from an abandoned warehouse close to the Tecate crossing point into a rural area of Southern California, and was one of the longest ever discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexican government says the deployment of some 25,000 troops and federal police across Mexico is halting drug violence between warring cartels fighting for dominance of smuggling routes to the United States, citing a fall in monthly murder tolls. But violence has continued in Baja California, Mexico's bloodiest state, where more than 300 people have been killed this year. Some 2,350 people have died in Mexican drug violence so far this year, most of them members of rival gangs.(Editing by Eric Walsh)
