Gunbattles in Mexico kill 13

Part of the shootout went through heavily populated areas.

TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Massive, running gunbattles broke out between suspected drug traffickers on the streets of this violent border city Saturday, killing 13 people and wounding nine, law enforcement officials said.

All of the dead were believed to be drug traffickers, possibly rival members of the same cartel who were trying to settle scores, said Rommel Moreno, the attorney general of Baja California state, where Tijuana is located.

Eight suspects and one federal police officer were injured, none gravely, said Agustin Perez Aguilar, a spokesman for the state public safety department. The suspects are being held on suspicion of weapons possession among other possible charges.

Police recovered 21 vehicles, many with bullet holes or U.S. license plates, and a total of 54 guns at various points in the city where the battles broke out in the pre-dawn hours, Perez Aguilar said.

At one point, the alleged traffickers were riding through heavily populated areas of the city, firing at one another as they drove and being chased by the military, state and local police.

“Evidently this is a confrontation between gangs,” Moreno told reporters.

The violence began on a busy, well-traveled avenue, when traffickers began firing at each other from vehicles, leaving seven dead, Moreno said.

The first shootout apparently sparked two additional gunbattles in other areas of the city, claiming three victims altogether. Two more men were shot to death in a fourth confrontation with police outside a local hospital. The body of a third man, who police believe was involved in one of the confrontations, was also found at the hospital.

Drug gangs have staged a series of bloody shootouts and assassinations in Tijuana in recent years as part of running turf battles for control of lucrative trafficking routes.

In January, eight people died in a gunbattle at a Tijuana safe-house apparently used by drug hit men to hold kidnapped rivals. In that confrontation, hit men holed up inside the house battled police and soldiers with automatic weapons for three hours.