Asia-Pacific
FBI: No evidence Mexico hit men targeted Americans
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-03-17 09:53
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Confused hit men may have gone to the wrong party, the FBI said Tuesday as it cast doubt on fears that the slaying of three people with ties to the US consulate shows that Mexican drug cartels have launched an offensive against US government employees.
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 A federal police officer stands outside the US Consulate where the US flag flies at half staff in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Monday, March 15, 2010. [Agencies]
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Gunmen chased two white SUVs from the birthday party of a consulate employee's child on Saturday and opened fire as horrified relatives screamed. The two near-simultaneous attacks left three adults dead and at least two children wounded.
The attack drives home just how dangerous Ciudad Juarez has become - and just how vulnerable those who live and work there can be, despite the Mexican government's claims that most victims are drug smugglers.
According to one of several lines of investigation, the assailants - believed to be aligned with the Juarez drug cartel - may have been ordered to attack a white SUV leaving a party and mistakenly went to the "Barquito de Papel," which puts on children's parties and whose name means "Paper Boat."
"We don't have any information that these folks were directly targeted because of their employment by the US government or their US citizenship," FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons told The Associated Press by phone from El Paso, just across the Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez.
The FBI is still investigating the backgrounds of the victims.
Experts cast doubt on the idea that drug cartels would be interested in turning their guns on US government employees.
"A systematic, nationwide shift to the use of such tactics would work against drug traffickers' interests," said Allyson Benton, an analyst with the Eurasia Group. "It would dramatically raise the level of both Mexican and US governmental involvement in the fight against organized crime."
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She leapt screaming from her car, begging the men to stop and telling them her children - ages 2, 4 and 7 - were inside, the friend said. But they continued until her husband, Jorge Alberto Salcido, was covered in blood, slumped dead behind the steering wheel.
All three children in the car were treated for injuries and released - the older children grazed by bullets and the youngest hit by shards of glass, the friend said. His account differed from authorities who said two children were in the car.
The friend asked not to be named, for fear of his own safety. Mexican authorities declined to comment on the discrepancy.
The other attack killed Arthur H. Redelfs, 34, and his wife, Lesley A. Enriquez, 35, a consulate employee who was four months pregnant. They too had just left the party at the lemon-yellow business, decorated with drawings of children's blocks in a neighborhood of two-story homes with manicured lawns.
Their 7-month-old daughter watched the slayings from the back seat, where she was strapped into a car seat. Police found her wailing, her parents dead from gunshots.
President Felipe Calderon, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa and US Ambassador Carlos Pascual flew together to Ciudad Juarez to express their outrage on Tuesday. Calderon, whose trip had been planned prior to the attacks, announced an expansion of the country's welfare program.
"Both countries must keep collaborating to defeat these organizations, stop cross-border trafficking of drug, guns and illegal money, and protect young people and children who are the targets of these criminals," Calderon said.
