GUNMEN KILL MORE THAN 20 IN JUAREZ

JUAREZ -- Gunmen killed more than 20 people -- eight in one slaying --
on Wednesday in one of the bloodiest days of the year.

There were multiple shootings outside a nightclub, outside a
convenience store and outside an elementary school as the violence
flared up with fury.

Juarez police reported shootings as the night wore on, but it was not
immediately known how many were dead. One news outlet dubbed the event
"Black Wednesday."

More than 40 homicides have occurred since Monday despite a heavy
presence of federal police and soldiers in the city.

Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said in a statement that the mass
attacks were due to the worsening of a war between gangs linked to
organize crime.

The most recent massacre involved the deaths of four young men in a
car outside a convenience store off Cuatro Siglos boulevard, which
runs parallel to the border highway in El Paso.

After the killing, a video was posted on the Internet site YouTube.com
showing a crowd of people and a grieving woman crying and yelling out
for her son. "Not him," she screamed. "Not him."

Chihuahua state police said that the victims were 18 and 19 years old
and that one had not been identified. There was speculation the
victims were students.

About 11:30 a.m., an attack occurred near downtown Juarez in which
three people were killed in front of an elementary school. Two men and
a woman were gunned down while in a 1996 Cadillac with New Mexico
license plates.

The day's single largest death toll was a shooting outside the Aristos
bar near downtown.

The bloody bodies of eight men lay outside the bar amid bullet casings
and glass beer bottles about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The mayor said Aristos closed about 2 a.m., and the eight men had been
outside the bar when the shooting happened. All of them were shot in
the head, officials said.

The Chihuahua state attorney general's office issued a statement
Wednesday night saying investigators were following leads possibly
linked to auto thefts based on the criminal records of three of the
victims.

The slayings at Aristos took place near the crossing of streets
Vicente Guerrero and Honduras.

Christian Amaparan, a city employee who was doing street repairs near
Aristos, said he was surprised by the location of the multiple slaying.

"It's not normal," he said. "I mean, it is normal but not
here."

Amaparan, 26, said he has worked for the city government for three
years and has seen his share of violence because his work takes him
all over Juarez.

Officials did not find any weapons at the scene of the Aristos
Nightclub murders or inside the 1990 Chevrolet Blazer, which belonged
to the people killed, said Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for Chihuahua
state police.

Police did find 12 bullets in the car, Sandoval said.

Federal police re-examined the crime scene about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.
They looked at the skull fragments and bullet casings left by
investigators and noted that the victims had been shot with a 9 mm
handgun.

A nurse, who has lived across the street from the bar for 20 years,
said she was at work when the shootings occurred.

The woman said she would have barricaded herself in her house with her
dog even if she had been home at the time.

"Even being a nurse -- if I hear the gunshots, I don't come out. It
doesn't matter," she said.

The location of the slayings scared her -- but because killings are so
common in Juarez, she no longer feels sympathy for the dead, she said.

"You don't say any more, 'Poor people who got killed.' You say, 'Poor
wives. Poor mothers,' " she said. "You feel sorry for their kids. You
don't feel sorry for the people who died."

Sixteen homicides occurred before 5 p.m., and the violence continued
into the night with at least five more homicides reported.

Juarez has recorded about 810 killings this year. There were 539
killings at this time last year, according to a tally kept by the El
Paso Times.

More than 5,000 people have been victims of homicides in Juarez since
the war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels began in January
2008 and sparked an unprecedented wave of murder.