THREE MEXICAN DRUG AGENTS FOUND SLAIN

MEXICO CITY, April 12 - Three Mexican law enforcement agents assigned to a
Tijuana anti-drug unit were found slain Tuesday in a truck parked on a
highway outside the northwestern border city, federal officials said today.

The slayings of the three, who police said had apparently been tortured
before they were killed, were the latest in a recent wave of killings of
Mexican law enforcement officials and others along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the past two months, Tijuana's police chief, a former head of the state
police homicide division and one of the city's most prominent attorneys
have been killed. On Sunday, the body of a Mexican newspaper reporter who
had been covering drug-trafficking issues was dumped across the border in
Texas. On Monday, four young men in Nuevo Laredo, just south of Laredo,
Tex., were shot dead.

The border violence has continued to escalate despite a recent, heavily
publicized pledge by President Ernesto Zedillo to boost law enforcement
efforts along the border. Authorities refused to speculate on a motive for
the killings of the three agents, who were members of a unit assigned to
investigate drug cartels and organized crime along the Mexican border south
of San Diego.

Mariano Herran Salvatti, director of Mexico's federal anti-drug agency -
which oversees the Tijuana unit - said the men recently had been executing
search warrants in connection with two notorious drug-trafficking
organizations - including one run by the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix
brothers, which is reputedly the country's most violent cartel.

Herran said he had few details on how the men were killed but disclosed
that they had not been shot. Mexican drug-trafficking organizations almost
invariably shoot their victims in the head execution-style or gun them down
in a hail of bullets. Herran also declined to speculate on whether the
recent killings in and around Tijuana - a border city of 1.5 million with
one of the highest homicide rates in Mexico - are related.

"We are really saddened by this, and we are going to continue this fight
with the same vigor," Herran said at a news conference today. "This is
going to be a frontal battle against the Arellano Felix brothers."

The slain agents were identified as Oscar Pompa, 48; Jose Luis Patino, 47;
and Capt. Rafael Torres, who was on loan to the unit from the state police
agency. Officials said Pompa and Patino had been living in San Diego for
"security reasons."

Neither Mexican nor U.S. law enforcement agencies have made serious headway
in curtailing the criminal activities of the Arellano Felix family in
recent years.

Researcher Garance Burke contributed to this report.