Six Americans Killed in Mexico

By: Michael Stevens
11/04/2010 04:44 PM ET

Gunmen have killed six U.S. citizens in separate attacks since Saturday in the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez, the U.S. consulate said on Thursday, as Mexico struggles to halt surging murders.

University of Texas students Manuel Acosta and Eder Diaz, who studied at the El Paso campus just across the border from Ciudad Juarez, became the latest victims when they were gunned down as they drove through the city on Tuesday.

The killings followed the deaths of four other Americans, including a woman who died of multiple gunshot wounds inside a tortilla shop in Ciudad Juarez on Saturday.

Two U.S. citizens died on Saturday when they came under fire in their vehicle. “Police said shooters fired 50 rounds, … peppering the black BMW with bullets during an assault Saturday morning,” the consulate said in a statement.

On Sunday, another U.S. citizen was killed along with two Mexican men when gunmen opened fire on a group standing outside a house. It was not clear why the Americans were targeted.

Such killings are rare because most American tourists have stayed away from Ciudad Juarez since drug violence surged in January 2008. Since then, more than 7,000 people have died in and around Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing city that is now engulfed in criminal anarchy.

Mexico President Felipe Calderon, who launched a war on drug cartels in late 2006, faces his toughest test in Ciudad Juarez, where 7,500 troops and elite police have been unable to end beheadings, extortions and attacks with explosives hidden in cars.

In one of the worst attacks against Americans, U.S. consular employee Lesley Enriquez and her husband were shot dead in Ciudad Juarez as they left a children’s party in March. U.S. President Barack Obama expressed outrage at the shooting.

October was the deadliest month in the city’s history, with 350 people killed, including 14 people at a birthday party. The drug war death toll across Mexico is now at more than 31,000 since December 2006.

A war over trafficking routes between local cartel boss Vicente Carrillo and Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, who heads the Sinaloa cartel, has fueled hopelessness in the Ciudad Juarez despite the government’s efforts to rebuild schools and parks.

For lack of a better future, jobless youths join gangs and wade into countless battles over protection rackets, drug sales, smuggling and kidnapping.