MEXICAN DRUG CARTEL FINISHING OFF RIVAL GANG, EXPERTS SAY

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - The massacre of 18 people at a drug
rehabilitation center near the Texas border is part of a final push by
one drug cartel to finish off another, authorities and analysts say.

The killings - the largest mass slaying in recent memory in the
country's most violent city - raise the three-day death toll in Juarez
to nearly 40, despite the presence of 10,000 federal troops and police.

"We're witnessing the extermination of the Juarez cartel," said
Alfredo Quijano, editor of the Norte de Ciudad Juarez newspaper and an
authority on the war between the entrenched Juarez cartel and the
rival Sinaloa cartel. "The Linea, or Juarez cartel, is down to its
last line of defense."

Sinaloa hit men, he said, are "killing people at will, hitting them
like sitting ducks."

August set a record for killings in Juarez, across the border from El
Paso, with more than 300 deaths, raising the city's total for the year
to about 1,500.

Drug violence killed more than 1,600 people in Juarez in 2008, the
year the two cartels, which once formed part of an alliance known as
the Federation, declared war on each other.

The two men reportedly in charge, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes of the
Juarez cartel and Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, are
bitter rivals and have accused each other of targeting family members
- - a situation that makes any reconciliation virtually impossible,
analysts and authorities have said.

Gradually, the Sinaloa cartel has been pushing the Juarez cartel
toward the western part of the city and gaining the upper hand,
Quijano and others said, and the attack on the rehab center in western
Juarez is part of a final push against the resident cartel.

A U.S. investigator, speaking on condition of anonymity, generally
agreed with Quijano's assessment but cautioned: "We're a ways off from
declaring one group the winner. For now, I'd say the Sinaloa cartel
clearly has the upper hand."

A Mexican federal law enforcement official also supported Quijano's
assessment.

At 7:30 Wednesday evening, as residents of the Aliviane rehab center
were gathering for their regular AA-style meeting, about a dozen men
dressed in commando-style garb walked into the center and, list in
hand, called out the names of several men, witnesses and authorities
said. The men were lined up against a wall of the center and sprayed
with bullets from AK-47 rifles.

Over the past year, experts say, rehab clinics such as Aliviane have
been targeted by rival gangs because they also serve as recruiting
grounds for cartels looking for hit men.

Aliviane was known as an informal base for members of a gang known as
the Aztecas, whose membership has spread into El Paso and Los Angeles,
analysts said. Aliviane officials were not available for comment.

"My basic interpretation of what happened is that it is part of the
back-and-forth series of massacres between the Cartel de
Juarez/Aztecas and Chapo - similar to massacres between Shias and
Sunnis in Iraq," said Howard Campbell, an expert on Mexican drug
cartels and author of an upcoming book on the drug war.

"The rehab places in that area are filled with Aztecas, so it would
seem to be enemies of the Aztecas who did it."

On Thursday, the rehab center's hallway and patio remained covered in
blood, and a trail of bloody footsteps led outside. Chained inside was
a chocolate-colored pit bull whimpering for water. The body of another
pit bull lay nearby in the hot sun. The dog had been shot during the
attack. Across the street, a middle-age couple arrived home after
spending the night at a hotel. They had heard the gunshots the night
before and left in a hurry.

"I don't even know what to think anymore," said the woman as she
clutched her hand to her chest.

"We heard the gunshots and took off, decided not to come home until
daylight," her husband said. They declined to give their names.

Down the street, two American women, Barbara Lampe and her mother,
Diana Gordon, pushed a grocery cart on their way to shop in El Paso a
few blocks away. Both women moved from California five months ago to
escape the high cost of living. They now rent a $130-a-month apartment
in Juarez.

During Wednesday's massacre, the women hid inside.

Gordon questioned her daughter's decision to move to
Mexico.

"It's a lot cheaper," Lampe replied, adding that her husband lost his
job in California and now lays pipes in El Paso.

"It was scary," Gordon said. "I'm ready to move."