Mexican massacre investigator vanishes; 2 bombs go off
REYNOSA, Mexico - Two cars exploded early Friday in a northern state where officials are investigating the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants, and a prosecutor investigating the massacre has disappeared.
REYNOSA, Mexico - Two cars exploded early Friday in a northern state where officials are investigating the killing of 72 Central and South American migrants, and a prosecutor investigating the massacre has disappeared.
The prosecutor, Roberto Jaime Suarez, vanished Wednesday in the town of San Fernando, where the bodies of the migrants were found, the Tamaulipas State Attorney General's Office said in a statement. A transit police officer in the town was also missing.
President Felipe Calderon, speaking during a forum on security, said that Suarez, a Tamaulipas state prosecutor, was involved in the initial investigation into the massacre, which authorities have blamed on the Zetas drug gang. The federal attorney general's office has since taken the lead in the case.
The two car explosions occurred less than 45 minutes apart in Ciudad Victoria, the Tamaulipas state capital, the attorney general's office said. The first exploded in front of the offices of the Televisa network and the second in front of transit police offices. There were no injuries, though both blasts caused some damage to buildings and knocked out the signal of the Televisa network for several hours.
The network described the explosion as a car bomb, but the state attorney general's office said the cause of the explosions had not been determined.
If confirmed, it would mean a total of four car bombs in Mexico this year - a new and frightening tactic in the country's escalating drug war.
The first exploded July 5 in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, killing a federal police officer and two other people. The second, which caused no injuries, happened just two weeks ago in front of police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria.
Just north of Ciudad Victoria, heavily guarded investigators working at a private funeral home in San Fernando identified 31 of the 72 massacred migrants, whose bodies were discovered on a ranch Tuesday, bound, blindfolded, and slumped against a wall.
Those identified included 14 Hondurans, 12 Salvadorans, four Guatemalans, and one Brazilian, according to the state attorney general's office.
The government's chief security spokesman said the migrants were apparently slain because they refused to help smuggle drugs. "The information we have at this moment is that it was an attempt at forced recruitment," Alejandro Poire told W radio. "It wasn't a kidnapping with the intent to get money, but the intention was to hold these people, force them to participate in organized crime - with the terrible outcome that we know."
