Northern Mexico was shaken by a weekend of violence, with 47 deaths blamed on drug cartels and a series of grenade attacks that injured a dozen people, officials said on Sunday.
Twelve people, including six children, were hurt in a late night grenade attack at a busy plaza outside Monterrey, according to officials who said it was one of four bombings to rock the industrial border city over the weekend.
Authorities said on Sunday that the grenade was thrown by unidentified assailants at about 11pm on Saturday near the town hall in Guadalupe, a suburb of the bustling city near the border with the US.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Earlier on Saturday, three explosive devices were detonated, including one near the US consulate and another not far from a prosecutor’s office that wounded a guard. The blasts damaged roads and nearby vehicles, said police, who have yet to identify the culprits.
Monterrey, about 120km from the US border, has been the scene of brutal violence blamed on feuding drug cartels fighting over control of trafficking routes into the lucrative US market.
Last month, the US State Department barred its personnel from taking children with them when they occupy posts at the consulate in Monterrey, citing security fears.
Officials in Mexico City in a statement expressed the government’s “strongest condemnation” of the attacks and vowed to do their utmost to combat organized crime across the country.
The bombings in Monterrey took place amid a new wave of drug-related killings, mostly in northern Mexico, close to the lucrative US drug market, that has claimed nearly four dozen lives over the past few days.
In the town of San Jose de la Cruz, in an isolated mountain region in the northern state of Durango, presumed rival drug gangs clashed in a bloodbath that left 14 people dead, the local prosecutor said on Saturday.
In Chihuahua, another 33 murders took place, officials said, adding that 13 of them took place throughout the state overnight on Saturday.
Meanwhile, police intensified their search on Sunday for 20 Mexican tourists kidnapped by gunmen last week in the beach resort city of Acapulco.
The tourists from Morelia in neighboring Michoacan state were abducted late on Thursday and officials said their was no word as to their whereabouts or their fate.
More than 28,000 people are believed to have been killed in drug cartel-related violence in Mexico since late 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown.
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