Kidnap Victims Found Dead After Mexico Gunfight

The bodies of six kidnap victims were found inside a house in Mexico yesterday following a three-hour shootout between gunmen and soldiers and police.

The victims, all male, were blindfolded and gagged and had been shot in the head. The authorities in the city of Tijuana, near the US border, said the men had probably been abducted for ransom, or picked up for association with a rival gang.

The three-hour battle between a handful of gunmen in a house and about 100 soldiers and police outside has highlighted fears that a military-led offensive aimed at quelling a gruesome turf war between drug cartels is turning into a more general conflict.

Soldiers and state and local police were sent in to help control the gunfight, which began when federal agents prepared to raid a house police now say was a shelter for a cell of the Arellano Félix drug cartel.

Three nearby schools were evacuated, and television stations showed police running with small children in their arms while shots rang out.

Edgar Millan, a spokesman with the federal public safety department, said the shootout killed one gunman and wounded four officers.

Four gunmen were arrested - one is a state police investigator and another a Tijuana police officer, Millan said. The four will be flown to Mexico City for questioning. Millan said officials recovered 11 automatic rifles and three bulletproof vests inside the house.

The bodies of the kidnap victims were hidden from view in the house. More than 2,500 people were killed in these kind of execution-style murders in Mexico last year. According to the newspaper El Universal, 142 have already died in 2008.