NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico – Gunmen killed five people in separate attacks in this border city, bringing to 101 the number of slayings so far this year, authorities said Tuesday.
Just before midnight Monday, police found a man's body riddled with bullets on a sidewalk of a working-class neighborhood. The man, who has not been identified, had been shot at least 30 times, authorities said.
Three hours earlier, gunmen killed Carlos Madrigal, 19, and Gabino Sanchez, 20, as they stood on a street in western Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, police said.
And in a Monday afternoon attack, assailants shot to death Hermes Villanueva, 14, and Rosalio Jimenez, 29, inside a pharmacy two blocks away from an international bridge, police investigator Victor Almanza said.
Villanueva's father, also wounded in the attack, remained hospitalized in critical condition, Almanza said.
Nuevo Laredo, a city of 330,000, has been caught in a turf war between rival drug gangs fighting for billion-dollar (billion-euro) smuggling routes into the United States. Since Jan. 1, 101 people, including eight police officers, have been slain in the city, compared to 39 during the same period last year.
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