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Mexican police chief slain in war on drugs
10-11-`07 | The Sydney Morning Herald

TIJUANA: Gunmen have killed the police chief of a Mexican city bordering California, shooting him 50 times in an apparent revenge attack after police found a drug-smuggling tunnel under the border.

Gunmen broke into the house of the Tecate police chief, Juan Soriano, early on Tuesday morning and shot him repeatedly in the face and torso as he slept beside his wife, an official at the Baja California state attorney-general's office said. His wife was not hit.

The killing of Mr Soriano, who had started his job only last week, appeared to be an act of revenge against Mexican police, who on Monday discovered a tunnel nearly 1.6 kilometres long running into California from Tecate near the Pacific coast after a tip from the US Border Patrol.

"As soon as Soriano made public the discovery of the tunnel, he went home and, hours later, they executed him in his bedroom," the official, who requested anonymity, said.

Police also found two tonnes of marijuana in a vehicle near the tunnel, which ran from an abandoned warehouse close to the Tecate crossing point into a rural area of southern California and was one of the longest discovered along the US-Mexico border.

The Mexican Government says its deployment this year of 25,000 troops and federal police across Mexico is halting drug violence between warring cartels fighting for dominance of smuggling routes to the United States. But drug violence has killed 2350 people so far this year and hundreds of police have died in gangland-style murders.

The President, Felipe Calderon, who launched the army crackdown within days of taking office in December, said on Tuesday that he did not expect to win the war on cartels during his six-year term.

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