TIJUANA COPS LOSE GUNS TO TROOPS MEXICAN FORCES SENT TO CURB DRUG GANGS

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Police in Tijuana suspended their patrols in the
violent border city Friday after soldiers sent by President Felipe
Calderon to crack down on drug gangs and corruption seized most of
their guns.

Tijuana Public Safety Secretary Luis Javier Algorri said that without
arms, it was too dangerous for the force of 2,000 police to patrol the
streets of the city where 13 officers were shot dead last year.

"This is an unfortunate situation because it leaves agents defenseless
and does not allow them to serve the community," Algorri said at a
news conference.

On Tuesday, Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to Tijuana
to hunt down drug gangs. The soldiers swept police stations and took
officers' guns for inspection Thursday amid allegations by federal
investigators that a corrupt network of officers supports smugglers
who traffic drugs into the United States.

On Friday, soldiers monitored those leaving and entering Tijuana,
while federal and state police manned checkpoints within the city limits.

Dubbed "Operation Tijuana," the mobilization is the second major
military offensive against drug gangs by Calderon, who took office
Dec. 1 promising to crack down on organized crime.

Last month, Calderon sent 7,000 troops to his native state of
Michoacan in western Mexico, which has been plagued by execution-style
killings and beheadings as rival gangs fight over marijuana
plantations and smuggling routes.

Drug gangs are blamed for more than 2,000 murders nationwide in 2006
and have left a particularly bloody trail in Michoacan and Tijuana,
where more than 300 people were slain last year.

On Friday, state officials said they had found nine bodies in a
shallow grave in the city of Uruapan, in Michoacan state.

An anonymous call sent police to an abandoned warehouse Thursday in
Uruapan, about 180 miles west of Mexico City. There, officials removed
a loose section of flooring and discovered the mass grave, said
Magdalena Guzman, a spokeswoman for the state prosecutors' office.

Officials found the bodies of three men and one woman late Thursday.
Their feet and hands were tied together, and their mouths were covered
with tape. The bodies of five other men were uncovered Friday. All
were in advanced stages of decomposition, indicating the victims were
killed some time ago. No suspects were in custody.

Uruapan has been the site of some of Mexico's most brutal slayings,
including a Sept. 6 attack in which gunmen dumped five severed heads
onto a bar dance floor.

In another, possibly drug-related slaying, a state legislator was
gunned down in the center of Acapulco on Thursday as he was traveling
to a radio and television station for an interview.

Jorge Bajos Valverde, a member of the ruling National Action Party,
was shot several times by assailants who stepped out of a white van
blocking his path, said Gloria Mendez, a spokesman for Acapulco's
Public Safety Department.

She said he died instantly and the motive for the attack was
unknown.

In the past two years, Acapulco has been a hit by a wave of
execution-style killings blamed on rival drugs gangs fighting over
lucrative smuggling routes and a budding local drug market.

Opposition politicians and residents have expressed doubt that
Calderon's highly publicized drug crackdown will have much of an impact.

His predecessor, Vicente Fox, also designated thousand of agents to
fight drug trafficking, arresting several alleged kingpins during his
six-year term.