Associated Press
REYNOSA, Mexico -- This border city and others near the eastern end of the U.S. border escaped the worst of Mexico's bloody drug war for years, but now the bodies are piling up, several journalists are reportedly missing or dead and once-busy streets are empty after dark.
The crumbling of an alliance between two Mexican drug gangs has plunged the 200-mile stretch of border into violence, raising fears of a new front in the drug war, a U.S. anti-drug official told The Associated Press.
In Mexican border cities stretching from Matamoros near the Gulf to Nuevo Laredo, gunfire has been heard almost daily, and at least 49 people were killed in drug war-related violence in less than six weeks.
Reynosa's main plaza and Calle Hidalgo, a pedestrian shopping street, still bustle during the day. But the streets are deserted by evening, clothing store manager Manuel Diaz said.
"I imagine they (shoppers) are scared, because there are no customers in the street," he said. Diaz himself kept his children home from school last month when rumors of abductions terrorized parents and many schools suspended classes.
Drug gangs have set up vehicle "checkpoints" along highways to the U.S. border, apparently to look for their rivals, according to the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey, two hours south of the Texas border.
Drug violence has killed almost 18,000 people throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against drug traffickers in December 2006. Most of the killings have been among rival smugglers, according to the federal government.