MEXICO GUNMEN EXECUTE 3 IN DRUG RAID

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Gunmen broke into a home early Wednesday and
opened fire, killing a man, his wife and their child in what police
said was probably a dispute between drug traffickers.

The killers overlooked three other children, who were in another part
of the house and survived the attack, Notimex state news agency reported.

Investigators found small amounts of marijuana in the house in western
Michoacan state, and believed the house was used to store larger
quantities, regional police said.

The killings -- like the 1998 massacre of a marijuana trafficker and
18 family members in Ensenada, Baja California -- suggest that the
violence associated with hard-drug trafficking also affect the
marijuana trade in Mexico.

Neighbors and the surviving children said the family's father had
received death threats over the last two months.

They said three armed men entered a bedroom and shot the couple as
they slept, and then shot their young son in another bedroom.

Officials say Michoacan, once a quiet farm state, has been
increasingly caught up in the drug trade, often operated out of
private homes.

The Attorney General's Office reported Wednesday that it had
dismantled 17 methamphetamine laboratories in Michoacan since the
beginning of 1999, 14 of them in Uruapan city, 170 miles west of
Mexico City.

``The majority of the clandestine laboratories were located in private
homes (or) orchards,'' the office said in a press statement.