MEXICO INVESTIGATES GENERAL'S KILLING

Mexican authorities Thursday began an investigation into the killing
of a retired Mexican general who was shot dead in Nuevo Laredo barely
a month after taking a job as police chief of the violent border town.

Gen. Manuel Farfan, 61 years old, was gunned down late Wednesday night
by unknown attackers, according to officials from the Mexican attorney
general's office. His killing is a blow to the new state governor of
Tamaulipas, who vowed new offensives against violent crime in a state
where drug cartels have been encroaching on government authority.

Mr. Farfan was killed on his way home from the police station when his
attackers ambushed him in front of a well-known restaurant in Nuevo
Laredo, the border town across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. Four
of the chief's bodyguards were killed during the attack, along with
Mr. Farfan's personal secretary. Officials say they haven't determined
what triggered the killings, but suggested it may have been the work
of drug cartel Los Zetas, which has targeted officials in the past.

Mr. Farfan had been on the job since Jan. 1. The ex-army general was
one of 11 military men tapped this year by the new governor, Egidio
Torre, to take charge of civilian police departments in troubled areas
in Tamaulipas.

In a similar incident last June, Mr. Torre's brother, Rodolfo, was
shot dead on a highway as he campaigned in the state gubernatorial
election which was only days away. Egidio Torre took his place, and
promised a crackdown on the criminal groups believed to be responsible
for the killing.

In the last year, Tamaulipas state, which shares some 230 miles of
border with Texas, has become one of Mexico's most violent places.
Cities including Nuevo Laredo and Reynosa are the battlegrounds for
two Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel. Once part of
the same organization, the two split in early 2010 and have been
fighting a turf war ever since to control transit routes for cocaine,
methamphetamines and heroin, U.S. and Mexican officials say.

Authorities on both sides of the border have complained that
corruption within local police departments has been a source of the
disorder.

The use of former military officials, seen as less corrupt, to head
police departments has been credited for successes in Mexican states
like Coahuila, where they are running municipal police in 16 cities.
But they too have become targets. Last year, ex-generals who had
become police chiefs in Cancun and Garcia, in Nuevo Leon state, were
killed by attackers.

"It's not difficult, simply not difficult, given my experience to set
the guidelines necessary to be the best police force in Tamaulipas,"
Mr. Farfan told reporters gathered in Nuevo Laredo last month.