Mexico investigator vanishes
Official was probing killing of migrants
MEXICO CITY – A law enforcement official investigating this week’s massacre of 72 migrants in northern Mexico was missing Friday, while possible car-bomb explosions rocked a television station and police station in the same violence-torn state.
Meanwhile, authorities in Tamaulipas state said they had so far identified the remains of 31 of the massacre victims and determined that they were from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Brazil.
Tamaulipas officials said Roberto Suarez, an agent for the state prosecutor’s office involved in the investigation, went missing Wednesday. That was a day after Mexican marines found the slain migrants on a ranch outside the town of San Fernando.
A San Fernando police officer was also reported missing Friday. The case is now run by the federal attorney general’s office.
The disappearances and car blasts appeared to be further signs of the lawlessness that prevails in Tamaulipas, a stronghold of drug traffickers across the border from Texas.
In Ciudad Victoria, the state capital, a car blew up shortly after midnight outside the Televisa office, though it was not immediately known whether it was rigged with a bomb. The explosion caused damage but no one was hurt.
Less than an hour later, a second car exploded outside a San Fernando police station. No one was injured.
The car blasts were the second and third in Tamaulipas this month. A car detonated outside state police headquarters in Ciudad Victoria three weeks ago.
Last month, a car bomb blast in Ciudad Juarez, in the border state of Chihuahua, killed a police officer and three others, raising worries that drug gangs were adopting a new weapon in the nearly 4-year-old drug war.
In recent days, attackers have hurled grenades at Televisa stations in Tamaulipas and neighboring Nuevo Leon state. Drug gangs have made it so dangerous to report the news that many outlets have stopped trying.
In San Fernando, Mexican authorities and foreign emissaries worked to identify massacre victims found Tuesday after a survivor from Ecuador made his way to a highway checkpoint manned by marines.
Officials said the migrants were captured on their way to the U.S. border by the Zetas gang.