TIJUANA HELL ON EARTH

Drug Lords Massacre 70 In Past 10 Days

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Bodies are cut up and dumped in acid. Victims are
stripped naked and hung from bridges.

Others have their tongues cut out before being murdered -- Mexican
gangs are using horrifying methods to outdo each other in an already
harrowing drugs war.

Drug cartel hitmen have massacred some 70 people in the past 10 days
in Tijuana on the U.S.-Mexico border, once a freewheeling city serving
Americans tequila, cheap medicines and sex that is being devastated by
the war.

Mexico's government says most of the recent victims belonged to
Tijuana's Arellano Felix family cartel that won notoriety in the 1990s
for smuggling tonnes of cocaine into California and for its ruthless
elimination of enemies.

But it has been weakened in recent years with former leaders killed or
arrested, and other cartels are moving in to take control of the drugs
trade in Tijuana and throughout the border state of Baja California.

"The Arellano Felix cartel no longer has control of drug trafficking
in Tijuana, rival gangs are coming into the plaza," said Baja
California's police chief, Daniel de la Rosa.

In one of the nastiest mass executions in the city, hitmen dumped 16
bodies across Tijuana, some with their tongues cut out, late last month.

Days later, police found a barrel suspected of containing human
remains in acid with a message from a gang threatening to make more
"soup" of rivals.

Since the drug war exploded in 2006, Tijuana has become one of
Mexico's most violence cities.

President Felipe Calderon has deployed thousands of troops in the
city, which lies across the border from San Diego, but they have not
stopped the killings and he is bogged down in a search for new
strategies to halt the relentless violence across Mexico.

Now the rival Gulf cartel and its feared armed wing, the Zetas, has
joined the fight in Tijuana, fanning out from its home turf near Texas.

Armed with a huge arsenal of grenades, automatic weapons, dynamite and
even rocket launchers, the Zetas -- set up by former Mexican army
special forces troops in the late 1990s -- are known for especially
brutal killings, such as beheading their victims and amputating body
parts.

"Looking at the way these new executions are being carried out, we
believe the Gulf cartel is operating in Baja California in a clear
escalation of the conflict," Martin Rubio, the top official at the
federal attorney general's office in the state, told Reuters.

Mexico's most wanted man Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, a prison escapee who
leads a cartel from the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, also wants
control of Tijuana and its smuggling corridor into California -- one
of world's top drug markets.

Guzman declared war on the Gulf cartel in 2006 and the violence has
steadily intensified since then with more than 3,000 people murdered
in the turf wars across Mexico so far this year.

The fiercest fighting between the Sinaloa and Gulf gangs in recent
months was in Ciudad Juarez on the border with El Paso, Texas, but
experts say the war appears to have turned back to Tijuana.

"The Sinaloa cartel may be mounting a fresh offensive in Tijuana after
concentrating on Ciudad Juarez during the summer," the U.S. security
consultancy Stratfor said in a recent report.

Although it has been under intense pressure from rival groups and the
army, the Arellano Felix clan has refused to disappear, and Mexican
anti-drug officials say a new leadership is emerging.

Enedina Arellano Felix, one of four sisters, is now believed to manage
the family business after other brothers were arrested and one was
killed in a shootout with police.