Car Bomb Signals Deadly Intensification of Mexican Drug War

The long simmering drug war in Mexico along the Mexico-US border intensified yesterday as a car bomb detonated in a trap for Mexican police.

A drug cartel has used a car bomb for the first time in Mexico's decades-long fight against traffickers, setting a deadly trap against federal police in a city across the border from Texas, the mayor of Ciudad Juarez said Friday.

Mayor Jose Reyes said federal police have confirmed to him that a car bomb was used in the attack that killed three people Thursday.

It was the first time a drug cartel has used a bomb to attack Mexican security forces, marking an escalation in a raging drug war that already is extremely deadly: On Friday alone, a dozen people were killed and 21 wounded in a series of gun battles between soldiers and cartel gunmen in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, the federal Interior Department said.

Mexico is in the throes of an actual war where the drug cartels are outgunning and outmanning the federal authorities. With the use of the car bomb, it's yet another tactic that the Mexican authorities have to worry about and defend against.