10/09/2010

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen killed six police officers in the state of Tamaulipas on Sept. 9, authorities said. The gunfight, which claimed the lives of three members of the Tamaulipas Rural Police and three municipal traffic officers, occurred in the early morning hours on a highway in the town of Padilla, which is near the U.S.-Texas border. The slayings came less than a day after the Public Safety Secretary Jose Ives Soberón stepped down so he could be replaced by Antonio Garza García, the federal police commissioner in the western state of Michoacán. The killings were the latest violent crime in Tamaulipas, which was home to the massacre of 72 migrants last month, allegedly at the hands of members of the Los Zetas cartel. [Terra.com (Mexico), 08/09/2010; Milenio.com (Mexico), 08/09/2010; EFE (Mexico), 09/09/2010]