War zone in Tijuana

The bodies of six kidnap victims have been recovered from a house in Mexico, following a three-hour shootout between gunmen and soldiers and police.
 
The men had been killed by a shot to the head, a federal agent told a news briefing in the border city of Tijuana.
 
The stand-off began as agents prepared to raid a house that police say was a hideout for the Tijuana drugs cartel, also known as Arellano Felix.
 
It is the latest in a series of drug-related killings in Mexico.
 
Tijuana is the biggest city in Baja California, which was Mexico's most violent state in 2007 with more than 400 murders.
 
President Felipe Calderon sent more than 3,000 soldiers to Tijuana earlier this month, as part of a nationwide crackdown on drug trafficking and gang violence.
 During the incident nearby schools were closed down, and local television showed images of police officers carrying out children while gunfire was heard in the background.
 A spokesman for the federal Public Safety Department, Edgar Millan, said one of the gunmen had been killed and four police officers wounded.

Hundreds of police officers and soldiers waged a three-hour gun battle against heavily armed men in Tijuana Mexico Thursday, as residents of a normally quiet neighborhood ran for their lives. One suspect was killed and six kidnapping victims were found dead after the shootout.
 
In the past week, 14 people have been shot and killed eight people in Tijuana, including two local police officers, as well as a district commander, his wife and his 12-year-old daughter.
 
In the most recent gun battle which began Thursday around 11 a.m. in the La Mesa neighborhood,reporters for Radio Red FM said that the gunmen fired with large-caliber machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
 
Tijuana residents have told us they believe the violence will only get worse and that people are afraid to go out right now, avoiding public areas and keeping their children indoors.

Targeting Children
 
Hitmen from Mexico’s drug gangs are breaking traditional codes of honour by killing children in a chilling new chapter of a narcotics war that President Felipe Calderon is struggling to control.
 
In unprecedented attacks, gunmen killed a 3-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl and seriously wounded a 12-year-old girl in the city of Tijuana on the U.S. border this week as they targeted a senior local police officer.
 
Even hardened residents of Tijuana, where more than 300 people were killed in drug violence last year and severed heads were dumped on city streets, were shocked by photos of young Jose Luis Ortiz’s body riddled with bullets.
 
“How much longer must we wait for results from the military? Now the narcos are killing our children,” said a Tijuana shop assistant who gave her name only as Fernanda.
 
Ortiz and his mother and father were shot dead as they slept on Monday night. Gunmen apparently mistook the boy’s father for a police officer and had no qualms about killing the 3-year-old.
 
Moments later, they found the police officer they were looking for and murdered him, his wife and their youngest daughter. Their other child was wounded.
 
“This is a new strategy to attack children and families and respond to the government’s military assault on the cartels. The gangs want to sow panic and fear to overwhelm the authorities,” said Victor Clark, a drug trade expert at San Diego State University.
 
Over the past three decades, Mexican drug cartels hauling cocaine north to the United States have generally held to a code of honour that bans killing women and children and stops them from becoming addicted to the drugs they traffic.

TIJUANA, Mexico -- Rosalba Padilla thought the first shots were nothing but construction in her quiet, upper-class Tijuana neighborhood. It wasn't until she looked out her window and saw a sea of police that she realized the noise was gunfire.
  
Down the street, at the Preschool of Happiness, director Gloria Rico activated the school's alarm, prompting police to rush into the building, their guns drawn. Rico said the children were terrified by the chaos.

"Some were crying, one vomited and another wet his pants," she said, adding that the police quickly put away their weapons and started evacuating the children.

 
Tijuana residents e-mailed NBCSandiego.com to report on the violence. One man, who said he works in Tijuana, said the violence was taking place near Plaza Rio. He said televised reports were warning residents to stay in their homes.