Mexico Under Siege

EX-GENERAL, 2 OTHERS FOUND SHOT TO DEATH NEAR CANCUN

Mauro Enrique Tello Is One of the Highest-Ranking Officials to Be
Killed in the Lawlessness Fueled by Drug Trafficking and Other Gang
Crime. Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 People Are Reported Killed.

The bodies of a longtimeMexican army general and two associates were
discovered early Tuesday on a highway to Cancun, the latest
execution-style victims of the violence sweeping Mexico.

Brig. Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello, who left the army last month and was
working as a security consultant for the mayor of Cancun, is one of
the highest-ranking officials killed in lawlessness fueled by drug
trafficking and other gangland crime.

"Without a doubt, we are talking about an organized crime execution,"
state Atty. Gen. Bello Melchor Rodriguez told reporters. He said the
bodies were found in a bullet-riddled SUV that had probably been
intercepted on the dark road. The men had apparently been tortured
before being killed with single shots to the head, Melchor said.

Killed with the general were an active-duty army lieutenant and a man
thought to be a civilian who was serving as a bodyguard, authorities
said.

There was speculation that the slayings were intended as a warning to
Cancun officials, some of whom have sought to rid the popular beach
resort of drug traffickers and other gangsters.

The notorious Gulf cartel, among the most ruthless of Mexico's drug
gangs, is active in Cancun.

Tello and the two others "fell in the line of duty," Cancun Mayor
Gregorio Sanchez said at a news conference. "We will continue with a
firm hand. They are not going to intimidate us."

Tello served in the army's elite presidential guard but was dogged by
controversy. More than a decade ago, when he was a senior official in
Mexico City's Public Security Ministry, he was accused of the torture
and murder of six detained youths. He spent a year in prison before he
was ultimately cleared of the charges.

Elsewhere in Mexico, 14 people were reported killed between Monday
night and late Tuesday afternoon in the border state of Chihuahua.
Most of the dead were found in Ciudad Juarez.

In one incident, a man and a woman were gunned down in a supermarket
parking lot and a third person was killed in the checkout line.

In Durango state, two police officers were killed Tuesday in a
shootout, and another officer died when a police station in the port
city of Lazaro Cardenas was attacked before dawn.

In the state of Zacatecas, the police chief of Villanueva was shot to
death Monday. Residents had recently asked for army protection from
criminals and drug gangs.

More than 5,300 people were killed last year in a raging drug war in
which government forces are fighting traffickers and their hired guns,
and the traffickers are fighting among themselves for control of
lucrative drug routes to the U.S.