Asia-Pacific

FBI: No evidence Mexico hit men targeted Americans

(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-03-17 09:53
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More than 100 people protested Calderon's visit, demanding the government do more about the bloodshed. Police shoved and hit protesters to prevent them from approaching a hotel and a gymnasium where Calderon held events.

The consulate was closed Tuesday to mourn for the dead, but the officials were expected to meet with employees there.

Amid the tension, a bomb threat forced the evacuation of about 3,000 people at the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez. No bomb was found.

Already, the city is one of the world's deadliest places. More than 2,600 people were killed last year, and another 500 so far this year - all in a city of 1.3 million.

The attacks on Saturday were the second time this year that gunmen shocked Mexico by opening fire on a Ciudad Juarez party. In February, gunmen killed 15 youths in what relatives said was a case of mistaken identity. State officials, who have made several arrests in the attack, maintain someone at the party was targeted but have not said who.

People who knew Saturday's victims said they had nothing to do with drugs or crime.

Salcido was production manager at a Ciudad Juarez assembly plant of the Dallas-based information technology and outsourcing company, Affiliated Computer Services Inc.

The family friend said he had changed his home, work and mobile phone numbers recently after receiving calls from someone trying to extort money from him. Even so, Salcido, who led a local church choir, brushed off the threats, which are common in the crime-plagued city.

Enriquez was the sole consular employee killed in the attack. No stranger to Mexico's violence, her work entailed helping US citizens recover the remains of loved ones who had died in Mexico. Her husband worked as a jail guard in El Paso.

Members of both families declined to speak with reporters on Tuesday. Zonia Rivas, a nurse practitioner who lives across the street from Enriquez and Redelfs, said the couple would take walks around the neighborhood with their baby. Redelfs would clean his wife's car every Saturday afternoon, a detail Rivas admired.

Rivas said she spoke to Enriquez just before she returned to work from maternity leave, and expressed concern that Enriquez was taking a risk by returning to the violent city.

"I just said, 'Is there any way you can quit?' and she said no," Rivas said.

Associated Press writers Olivia Torres reported this story in Ciudad Juarez and Martha Mendoza in Mexico City. AP writers Alicia Caldwell in El Paso, Texas, and Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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