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Two more Americans slaughtered in Mexico

BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: SYNDICATED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER NOV 23, 2008 at 12:30 PM PST

Mexican police this week-end discovered at about 12:15 p.m. the bodies of a male and female believed to be Americans. The riddled bodies were found in a gray 2004 Kia Amanti also riddled with bullets at Boulevard Cuatro Siglos between Hermanos Escobar and Pérez Serna. Police said the car had U.S. plates.

The American couple were believed visiting in Juárez attending the funeral of the killed woman’s sister, who was also killed in a homicide only last week; Juarez police investigators told the El Paso Journal that the couple were obviously targeted.

The largest and only county hospital in El Paso Texas is located just across the border from Juarez Mexico. The El Paso hospital is the only major medical trauma center for miles around is where many wars on drugs and terror victims have been taken for life threading emergency care. A Thomason Hospital official confirmed to the Journal that a man and a woman shot multiple times and killed Saturday afternoon in Juárez worked as health-care professionals in El Paso.

The Thomason official said that the man was a physician's assistant who worked through the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center's Paul Foster School of Medicine, and that the woman was an intensive-care unit nurse at the hospital.

A statement from Chihuahua state police said that as many as 20 shell casings were found at the crime scene and that the victims -- a male driver, estimated to be in his late 50s, and a female passenger, believed to be in her late 30s -- were killed by gunshot wounds.

Investigators at the scene discovered what appeared to be AK-47 shell casings, which were sent for analysis to the Ballistic Forensics Laboratory in Juárez.

Police said the victims were transferred to the city morgue, where autopsies were expected to be conducted.

Juarez Police indicate they have no suspects but believe it is a Mexican cartel gang land style killing. More than a dozen Americans have died in Mexico this year alone from Mexican gang gun fire.

The Calderon war on drugs in Mexico so far this year has resulted in 4,300 bloody and growsume deaths all related to the drug wars.

Bañuelas

An 11-year-old American citizen from El Paso was killed recently during a highway robbery on the Durango-Mazatlan road in Mexico. The boy, Rico Armando Bañuelas, was on a family trip to Mazatlan when robbers tried to stop the Volkswagen Jetta he was riding in near a section of mountain road known as "El Espinazo del Diablo," (the devil's spine), El Siglo De Durango newspaper reported.

The robbers opened fire, killing Rico, when the Jetta sped past a roadblock the bandits had set up and used to rob bus passengers and another vehicle. Rey del Valle, and Rico's mother, Norma Patricia Chairez, were wounded.

"U.S. citizens should be aware of the risk posed by the deteriorating security situation, in Mexico and along the border" said a statement issued in Mexico City and Washington. "Violent criminal activity, including murder and kidnapping, in Mexico has increased."

New cases of disappearances and kidnap-for-ransom continue to be reported. No one can be considered immune from kidnapping on the basis of occupation, nationality, or other factors. Criminals have been known to follow and harass U.S. citizens traveling in their vehicles, particularly in border areas including Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Reynosa, Juarez, Mexicali, Tijuana and most all border towns. 

 Kyle Mostello Belanger

23 year old American Kyle Mostello Belanger has been reported missing since last May and believed to have been kidnapped and is being held against his will for ransom in Juarez Mexico. The information has been forwarded to the Mexican Government and to the FBI and other U.S. agencies with no apparent follow-up investigations much less locating arresting and punishing his perpetrators.

La Mesa California woman Libby Gianna Craig was among four people found shot to death in a canyon near Rosarito Beach in Baja California.
The 28-year-old was in an area known as Morro Canyon along with three Afro-American males, Mexican police identified as "Black Americans". Early reports also said more bodies were found in a separate location at different points of Playas de Rosarito, reported some Mexican papers.
 

All the shootings were apparently deliberate, targeted, not just random bystanders caught up in the wave of violence that has engulfed U.S. Mexican border cities, Mexican authorities said.

Also recently four Americans were shot and wounded as they were leaving the Arriba Chihuahua nightclub in the ProNaF tourist zone in the violent Mexican border city of Juárez.

The Mexican government has described much of the violence as revenge for President Felipe Calderón's two year-old crackdown on organized crime that sent thousands of soldiers and federal police into violence-plagued Mexican cities and all Mexican cities bordering the United States.

The Mexican President Calderon, as while as other officials have pledged to break the country's powerful drug cartels, which earn billions of dollars a year by supplying U.S. users. 

Why the U.S. Government has not issued the highest travel alerts to Americans traveling or intending to travel to Mexico is very troubling. Many believe that the close relationship between the two governments and indeed both presidents may contribute to that lenience shown Mexico by the U.S. Government in relation to the travel warnings.  

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