Gunmen Kill 3 Mexican Officers

The Associated Press

TIJUANA, Mexico --

Gunmen killed three police officers in separate attacks in less than 24 hours in the Mexican border state of Baja California, officials said Tuesday. Two more officers and a teenage girl died in violence elsewhere.

A police woman was shot down Tuesday while she was guarding the Red Cross building in the border city of Tijuana, across from San Diego, California, state prosecutors said in a statement.

The previous night, two other attacks killed another Tijuana officer and a police officer in the resort city of Rosarito, 20 miles south of the Mexico-U.S. border, prosecutors said.

In the southern state of Chiapas, a state and a federal agent died Tuesday when assailants lobbed grenades and opened fire on their patrol car, state investigators said in a statement.

A teenage girl on her way to school was killed when she was caught in a shootout between police and suspected Zetas, a feared gang of hit men tied to the Gulf drug cartel, in the town of Frontera Comalapa on the Guatemalan border, officials said.

Across Mexico, more than 10,800 people have died in gangland-style violence since December 2006, when President Calderon took office and launched a military-led crackdown on drug traffickers.