Deadly violence is reported across Mexico Aug. 23. In Hidalgo, the bullet-riddled body of state police chief Raymundo Zamorano was found on a roadside a day after he was kidnapped at gunpoint while patrolling the streets of Pachuca in his official car. A Tabasco [2] state police officer was gunned down at a police highway checkpoint near Villahermosa by hitmen in three pickup trucks. A second officer was wounded in the shooting. In Chihuahua state, 13 people, including four police officers, were killed—mostly in Ciudad Juarez, where prosecutors and judicial authorities were holding a regional summit. Among those killed in the city was Jesús Blanco, the new municipal police chief of Villa Ahumada. Two police were also killed in an armed attack on a checkpoint in Mazatlán, Sinaloa. In Valladolid, Yucatán, a taxi driver supposedly linked to the city's narcomenudista (low-level dealer) network was assassinated. (AFP [3], El Universal [4], El Universal [5], Aug. 23)
Also in Villahermosa, the heartland of Mexico's oil industry, a telephoned bomb threat prompted the evacuation of the office tower of the state oil company, known as the Pemex Pyramid, Aug. 20. A Pemex [6] Physical Security team with a GT200 "molecular detector" was called in to determine that the threat was false. (Milenio [7], Aug. 20)
