GUNMEN WOUND FIVE POLICE OFFICERS, ONE CIVILIAN

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico -- Gunmen burst into a crowded restaurant and opened
fire on a group of police in this violent Mexican border city Wednesday,
injuring five officers and another man.

The attack took place around 1:40 p.m. at a seafood restaurant in Nuevo
Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Three police officers
sustained gunshot wounds and were in grave but stable condition at nearby
hospitals, said Rene Ruiz, an investigating agent who arrived on the scene.

Two other officers suffered minor injuries. Victor Martinez, a man who had
been sitting with the officers but was getting up to leave when the
shooting started, was also injured, Ruiz said.

Martinez drove himself to the hospital for treatment.

Witnesses told reporters that several men armed with pistols and automatic
weapons entered the restaurant and carried out the shooting. It wasn't
clear how many assailants were involved.

No arrests were made and investigators said they didn't know why the police
officers were targeted.

Officials say nearly 100 people -- kncluding eight police officers -- have
been slain so far this year in Nuevo Laredo. Investigators in Mexico and
the United States believe violence spiked here thanks to a bloody war for
control of nearby smuggling routes over the border being waged by two rival
drug gangs.

The killings came shortly after the country's top anti-drug prosecutor,
Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy attorney general for organized
crime, said after an event in Mexico City that drug violence was likely to
continue throughout Mexico in response to the anti-narcotic actions of the
government of President Vicente Fox.

"The violence will continue in a grave manner all over the country," the
government news agency Notimex quoted Santiago Vasconcelos as saying.

The federal attorney general's office confirmed that the deputy attorney
general spoke to reporters in the capital, but said there was no transcript
available of what he said.

Osiel Cardenas, who authorities say headed the feared and powerful Gulf
Cartel based in Tamaulipas state, which includes Nuevo Laredo, was one of a
number of key accused king pins arrested sine Fox took office in December
2000. His arrest in 2003 helped spark the battle for territory that has
caused so much violence in Nuevo Laredo, authorities believe.