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Hit men kill 5 at family gathering in Mexico

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-27 13:58

CIUDAD JUAREZ - Suspected drug hitmen invaded a ranch in northern Mexico and opened fire on a family gathering, killing five people in the third big attack in Chihuahua state this month.

It happened near the sleepy town of Aldama in Chihuahua state on Monday evening. The dead included two brothers and an elderly man, shot in the head, the state attorney general's office said on Tuesday.

Related readings:  US-Mexico border tightened on drug cartel warning  Hit men kill 13 at party in Mexico tourist town  Gunmen kill 14 people in northern Mexico

The killings were believed to be part of a drug feud between gangs fighting over smuggling routes into the United States.

In Tijuana, a border city south of the Californian city of San Diego, police found three beheaded men on Tuesday. They had been beaten, set on fire and their heads placed at their feet.

The bodies were dumped on the edge of the city with messages threatening Tijuana's main drug cartel, the Arellano Felix gang, the Baja California state attorney general's office said.

Earlier this month, drug hitmen killed 13 people including a baby at a family party in the tourist town of Creel in Chihuahua state. In another attack on a drug rehabilitation center in Chihuahua's border city of Ciudad Juarez, hooded gunmen killed eight patients during a prayer session.

More than 2,300 people have died this year in Mexico's drug war, in a gang war for control of smuggling corridors into California, Arizona and Texas.

Violence is intensifying and gangs are ever more brazen despite the deployment of 25,000 troops and federal police across Mexico by President Felipe Calderon.