Five Die in Stampede in Northern Mexico

MONTERREY, Mexico – Five people died in a stampede caused when shots were fired during a concert in Guadalupe, a city in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, police said Sunday.

The group Intocable was performing at the livestock exposition center in Guadalupe, a city in the Monterrey metropolitan area, when shots were heard coming from a section packed with more than 500 people around 1:00 a.m., the municipal police department said.

Shouts of “shootout” caused the stampede, leaving five people crushed, police said.

Paramedics treated at least a dozen people for a variety of injuries.

Soldiers and state police officers cordoned off the facility and opened an investigation to determine whether shots were actually fired.

A number of shootouts between gunmen and the security forces have occurred recently in Nuevo Leon, with most of the incidents occurring in the Monterrey metropolitan area.

In neighboring Tamaulipas state, meanwhile, at least five people were killed Saturday in a shootout between army troops and gunmen, officials said.

The gunfight occurred in Comales, a town near the U.S. border.

A hand grenade exploded inside a house in the border city of Reynosa, wounding five people, including a minor, Tamaulipas state officials said.

Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas have been rocked by a wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers battling for control of smuggling routes into the United States.

The violence has intensified in the two border states since the appearance in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo Leon, in February of giant banners heralding an alliance of the Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia drug cartels against Los Zetas, a band of Mexican special forces deserters turned hired guns.

After several years as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas went into the drug business on their own account in late 2009 and now control several lucrative territories.

The cartels arrayed against Los Zetas blame the group’s involvement in kidnappings, armed robbery and extortion for discrediting “true drug traffickers” in the eyes of ordinary Mexicans willing to tolerate the illicit trade as long as the gangs stuck to their own unwritten rule against harming innocents.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence blamed on powerful cartels.

The country’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations, according to experts, are the Sinaloa, Tijuana, Gulf, Juarez, Beltran Leyva and Los Zetas cartels, and La Familia Michoacana.

A classified report provided by the government to senators last month estimated 22,743 people have died since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006.

Press tallies had put the number of people killed in drug-related violence since Calderon took office at 18,000.

The classified report estimates the death toll for this year, as of mid-April, at 2,904.

Calderon has deployed 50,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal police nationwide to combat drug cartels and other criminal organizations.

The anti-drug operation, however, has failed to put a dent in the violence due, according to experts, to drug cartels’ ability to buy off the police and even high-ranking officials.

Some analysts, moreover, say the government has not targeted money laundering, allowing the cartels to retain the resources needed to fight back.