LEADER OF NO. 3 DRUG CARTEL SLAIN AFTER APPARENT INTERNAL DISPUTE

MONTERREY, MEXICO -- The leader of Mexico's powerful Gulf drug cartel
has been shot to death and his body dumped near the U.S. border
following an internal feud, authorities said Tuesday.

Angel Salvador "El Chava" Gomez apparently was executed by other
members of the cartel with a bullet to the head after stealing $1
million in cash from them, said Julio Cesar Saucedo of the state
prosecutor's office in northeastern Tamaulipas state.

The feud in the Gulf cartel, Mexico's third most powerful, has claimed
eight lives, officials said.

"The cartel is headless," Saucedo said.

"Then again, these organizations never remain without a leader. We
assume the war will go on until someone is securely in charge," he
added, predicting more bloodshed as underlings battle for control of
the organization.

Gomez's body was found Friday, thrown into a gully off a road near the
city of Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville,
Texas. Next to him was the corpse of an associate.

The chief of the cartel had been missing since June 24 when he was
kidnapped, according to his family.

With up to two-thirds of the cocaine consumed in the United States
passing though Mexican territory, drug-related violence in Mexico's
northern states has become a daily fact of life.

Two of Gomez's cousins were gunned down Friday in the border city of
Nuevo Laredo. Four other associates were found executed in a car on
Sunday, their hands bound behind them with tape, police said.

The Gulf cartel was perhaps Mexico's top drug-smuggling organization
until its leader, Juan Garcia Abrego, was arrested in 1996 and
extradited to the U.S. He was sentenced to life in prison.