Mexico Under Siege

AT LEAST 8 KILLED IN SHOOTING AT A STREET PARTY IN SINALOA

Four gunmen leap from a pickup truck and fire semiautomatic weapons
at revelers in the town of Navolato in Sinaloa state. The shooters escape.

It was a street party at a popular gathering place, typical of
Saturday nights in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. Drinks, a musical
band, a joining together of the mostly young.

Then, shortly before midnight, a white double-cabin pickup screeched
to a stop on Palm Tree Street in the town of Navolato. At least four
gunmen burst from the vehicle and sprayed the party with semiautomatic gunfire.

Eight people were killed, among them women and teenagers. Several
more were seriously wounded and remained hospitalized Sunday, said
Jose Luis Leyva of the state prosecutor's office in Culiacan, the
state capital about 20 miles to the east.

The shooting may have been part of a string of apparent vigilante
attacks in which low-level criminals have been killed by armed squads
thought to be working with drug traffickers, police -- or both. More
than 30 carjackers and robbers have been killed in similar
circumstances in Sinaloa in the last few months, according to a count
kept here by journalists.

Two of the victims in Saturday's shootings had criminal records for
stealing cars, Leyva said in a rushed news conference Sunday.
"Anything is possible," he said.

The dead included two boys, 15 and 16, and two women, 18 and 25, Leyva said.

The shooters escaped, and witnesses said none of those attacked
appeared to have returned fire. Authorities said they recovered 95
bullet casings from the scene.

Sinaloa is home to many of Mexico's major drug kingpins, and the
cartels hold sway over large parts of the Pacific state. Along with
the border state of Chihuahua, it has the highest rate of slayings in
the country.

As part of a nationwide military campaign, the government of
President Felipe Calderon deployed the Mexican army in Sinaloa in
2007 to fight traffickers and restore law and order. More recently,
however, army operations have concentrated on rural regions of the
state where vast fields of marijuana have been cultivated for generations.