DRUG GANG CHIEF REPORTED KILLED IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY -- The Mexican authorities said Friday that a leader of
the Gulf drug gang had been killed in Matamoros during a day marked
by street fighting between soldiers and gunmen that paralyzed the
city, which is across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Tex.

The gang leader, Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas Guillen, who American and
Mexican officials say took control of the cartel after his brother
Osiel Cardenas Guillen was arrested in 2003, was killed by Mexican
marines, according to a statement by Alejandro Poire, the security
spokesman for the government.

Three other gang members were also killed, the statement said, and
the Mexican Navy reported that two marines and a soldier died during
the six-hour gun battle.

There was no official confirmation of any additional deaths. But the
Matamoros newspaper El Expreso reported on its Web site that one of
its reporters, Carlos Guajardo Romero, had been killed in the
cross-fire shortly after noon as he covered the fighting.

Mexican officials shut down all three bridges that link Matamoros
with Brownsville. They were closed for two hours but reopened on Friday night.

The United States Consulate in Matamoros tightened restrictions for
its personnel, restricting personal travel from midnight to 6 a.m.
The consulate recommended that Americans in Matamoros limit their
travel to the daylight hours and urged them to be "vigilant and aware
of their surroundings at all times."

With much of the Mexican media silenced in Matamoros and Reynosa,
which is across from McAllen, Tex., it was left to social networks to
report what took place on Friday.

On one video posted on YouTube, gunfire and grenade explosions rang
out across streets that were almost deserted. A battle for control
between the Gulf gang and its onetime enforcement arm, the Zetas, has
unleashed fierce fighting this year, and the Mexican authorities have
stepped up their search for the leaders of both. Mr. Cardenas, 48,
controlled the Matamoros-Brownsville smuggling corridor for the Gulf
gang and was responsible for shipping large cargos of marijuana and
cocaine to the United States, the State Department has said.