The Arellano Felix Organization

Tijuana police said the dead men belonged to the Arellano Felix cartel drug gang which is coming under more pressure than ever from a rival gangs and the Mexican army. It was not clear if the killed were a result of other Mexican cartels or was it between rivals from the same cartel?

According to the San Diego papers many of the bodies were soaked in blood in the road after one of the deadliest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narco-war.

Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.

Fourteen bodies lay in pools of blood, strewn along a road near assembly-for-export maquiladora plants on the city's eastern limits. The corpses were surrounded by hundreds of bullet casings and many of the victims' faces were destroyed.

A 15th body was found close by after the victim apparently tried to walk away before collapsing dead. Eight other men were wounded and taken to hospital.

“By the way this happened and the guns used, we believe the men are from the same cartel, the Arellano Felix gang,” said a senior police officer in Tijuana who declined to be named.

Two of the dead are believed to be senior hitmen for the Arellano Felix cartel and were identified by the large gold rings on their fingers. The rings carried the icon of Saint Death, a ghoulish grim reaper figure that gangsters believe protects them, police said.

The Baja Calif.'s "PGR" (the state's Dep't. of Justice) confirmed that "at least" two "Ministerial Police" officers were involved in the "narcokilling" and in league with the thugs.

Officials also found police helmets and body armor that the two hitmen used.

Six men were arrested but the remaining survivors escaped, the officer said.

One gang of thugs took a number of their wounded to a private clinic where they forced doctors to look after them. Police arrived, another confrontation took place and two more died. The "Municipal Secretary of Government" today asked Tijuana citizens to remain calm and not to leave their homes unless necessary. City police are on maximum alert.
 

A source close to the Tijuana mayor's office said local authorities had requested more troops for the city bordering San Diego, California, and that they could arrive this weekend.

President Felipe Calderón has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state since taking office in December 2006. Some 30,000 soldiers and federal police are deployed to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.

The army in Tijuana said it was on high alert for reprisals against soldiers and federal police following the shootout and the ensuing arrest. “The risk of attacks against our agents after an event like this is extremely high,” said Lt. Col Julian Leyzaola, Tijuana's police chief.

The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California. Recently the group has been under attack from a rival gang from the Pacific state of Sinaloa, led by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman.

Some 190 people have been killed in Tijuana so far this year. In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and there have been more than 900 this year.

The Arellano Felix cartel rose to prominence in the 1980s.

According to government sources the Arellano Felix cartel has paid millions of dollars in bribes to local law enforcement officers and other high ranking officials, and is blamed for increasing violence, including the murder of informants and rival traffickers.

Much of the group's activities centers on smuggling Mexican weed, Colombian and Afghanistan cocaine and other drugs along with Illegal aliens through Mexico to California.Tijuana Cartel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heads have begun to roll in Baja California's Att'y. Gen's. office after General Sergio Alponte, commander of Mexico's Military Region II, wrote a response letter to the state's Att'y. Gen. and to the press in which he named names and denounced corruption., (Our report of 4/24/08 relates) The state Att'y. Gen. has now asked two of his staff to resign: his own deputy A.G. as well as the head of the anti-kidnapping section; he has also ordered the dismissal of his own consultant.
 

Failure of coordination in the battle against these Mexican cartels is felt by many to be one of the reasons why ordering troops into the border areas by the Mexican president have not been effective and curtailed the violence. According to Raúl Benítez Manaut of the Center for Investigations of the Mexican National University (UNAM) the agencies involved in the fight against narcotics traffic in Mexico lack effective coordination.  In addition, there are major tactical deficiencies in carrying out the narcotics war because there is no analysis of operations to determine if they are winning or losing, but rather favor international cooperation to confront the problem.  "There is much conflict between the federal agencies," he said in pointing out that in Mexico there is no bureaucratic tradition of presidential coordination or mechanism for joint operations.  He explained that although President Felipe Calderón has tried to resolve the lack of coordination, building a strong presidency "different from that of Vicente Fox, which allowed everybody to do whatever," it requires an explicit order to coordinate departments.

Calling U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, "a paranoiac", businessmen in Reynosa, Tamaulipas decried the labeling of the border area as insecure, resulting in an official U.S. travel advisory to tourists.  In angry words, freely using the term "gringo," the merchants said their side of the border was no more insecure than the U.S. side.  They also maintain that the presence of army and police patrols should give assurance to the "gringo tourist."

Sources:

The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers (NAFBPO)

Tijuana police dept.

El Universal (Mexico City)

Entorno de Tamaulipas

Sign on San Diego