TWO DRUG SLAYINGS IN MEXICO ROCK U.S. CONSULATE

LA UNION, Mexico - Gunmen believed to be linked to drug traffickers
shot a pregnant American consulate worker and her husband to death in
the violence-racked border town of Ciudad Juarez over the weekend,
leaving their baby wailing in the back seat of their car, the
authorities said Sunday. The gunmen also killed the husband of another
consular employee and wounded his two young children.

The shootings took place minutes apart and appeared to be the first
deadly attacks on American officials and their families by Mexico's
powerful drug organizations, provoking an angry reaction from the
White House. They came during a particularly bloody weekend when
nearly 50 people were killed nationwide in drug-gang violence,
including attacks in Acapulco as American college students began
arriving for spring break.

The killings followed threats against American diplomats along the
Mexican border and complaints from consulate workers that drug-related
violence was growing untenable, American officials said. Even before
the shootings, the State Department had quietly made the decision to
allow consulate workers to evacuate their families across the border
to the United States.

In Washington, President Obama denounced the "brutal murders" and
vowed to "work tirelessly" with Mexican law enforcement officials to
prosecute the killers. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said
the killings underscored the need to work with the Mexican government
"to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico."

In a sign of the potential international reverberations of these
killings, President Felipe Calderon of Mexico similarly expressed his
indignation and condolences and said he would press forward with "all
available resources" to control the lawlessness in Ciudad Juarez and
the rest of the country.

The F.B.I. was sending agents to Ciudad Juarez on Sunday to assist
with the investigation and American diplomats were en route to meet
with their Mexican counterparts, said Roberta S. Jacobson, the
American deputy assistant secretary of state who handles Mexico.

"We take very seriously when our employees are harmed, whether the
intention was to harm U.S. employees or not," she said in a telephone
interview. "The question of whether this represents some ratcheting up
of the drug war will depend on the reason behind the killings."

The coordinated nature of the attacks, the automatic weapons used and
the location in a city where drug cartels control virtually all
illicit activity point toward traffickers as the suspects, said
Mexican and American officials, declining to be identified. Officials
with the state of Chihuahua issued a statement Sunday night saying
that initial evidence, corroborated by intelligence from the United
States, pointed to a gang known as Los Aztecas, which is linked to the
major drug cartel in Ciudad Juarez.

American interests in Mexico have been attacked by drug traffickers
before but never with such brutality. Attackers linked to the Gulf
Cartel shot at and hurled a grenade, which did not explode, at the
American consulate in Monterrey in 2008.

The shootings in Ciudad Juarez took place in broad daylight on
Saturday as the victims were en route home from a social gathering at
another consulate worker's home. The first attack was reported at 2:32
p.m.

Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, the husband of a consular worker,
was found dead in a white Honda Pilot, with bullet wounds to his body,
the authorities said. In the back seat were two wounded children, one
aged 4 and one 7. They were taken to the hospital.

Shell casings from a variety of caliber weapons were found at the
scene.

Another call came in 10 minutes later, several miles away. This time
it was a Toyota RAV4 with Texas plates that had been shot up, with two
dead adults inside and a baby crying from a car seat in the back.
Mexican officials identified the couple as Lesley A. Enriquez, 25, a
consulate employee, and her husband, Arthur H. Redelf, 30, from across
the border in El Paso, where he worked at the county jail.

Ms. Enriquez, an American citizen, was shot in the head. Her husband
was shot in the neck and left arm. A 9-millimeter bullet casing was
found at the scene.

Cmdr. Gomecindo Lopez of the El Paso County Sheriff's Department, who
is acting as a spokesman for the family, said Ms. Enriquez had been
pregnant.

In his statement, Mr. Obama was quick to laud the antidrug offense
begun three years ago by Mr. Calderon, which is backed by more than $1
billion in United States money. But a growing chorus of critics of
Mexico's drug war, which has led to spiraling levels of violence in
hot spots across the country, has asked Mr. Calderon to find a new
approach.

One critic, former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda, said in a
telephone interview on Sunday that given the violence "it is
surprising that this has not happened before." The killings, he said,
ought to prompt the Obama administration to rethink its support for
what he called Mr. Calderon's failed strategy.

In fact, Mr. Calderon is scheduled on Tuesday to make his third visit
to Ciudad Juarez in the last five weeks as he tries to contain the
disastrous public relations fallout from the killing of 16 people in
January that Mr. Calderon first brushed off as "a settling of
accounts" between members of criminal gangs.

It turns out the victims of the massacre were mostly students
celebrating a birthday. By all accounts, they were just young people
from a rough neighborhood trying to steer clear of the drug gang
violence that has turned Ciudad Juarez into Mexico's deadliest city.
More than 2,000 people were killed there last year, giving it one of
the highest murder rates in the world.

Those killings and Mr. Calderon's blunder - he was in Japan at the
time and later blamed mistaken information for his error - prompted
the government to shift course after three years of its military-led
crackdown on drug cartels and acknowledge that it has to involve
citizens in the fight and deal with the social breakdown fueling the
violence.

As killings have multiplied in Mexico, the government has long argued
that the overwhelming majority of the casualties of the drug war are
involved in the narcotics business. "The argument is absurd that the
killings are a sign of his success," Mr. Castaneda said, repeating an
oft-heard refrain of both the Mexican and American
governments.

Concerned about the rising violence, the State Department had decided
that employees at a string of consular offices along the Mexican
border - Tijuana, Nogales, Ciudad Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey and
Matamoros - could temporarily evacuate their families to the United
States. That decision was not formally announced until Sunday.