Mexico hit by shooting, grenade attacks

MEXICO CITY, Apr 13 (Reuters) Gunmen shot dead four men in a Mexican northern border city and a man was killed in a grenade attack at a Pacific coast restaurant as drug violence spiralled, according to police.

Mexico has been in the grip of a drug war between rival gangs since last year and about 1,500 people have been shot, beaten or suffocated to death as brutal cartels battle for control of the lucrative cocaine, heroin and marijuana trade.

Hitmen armed with assault rifles shot dead four men and wounded three others as they drove through the streets of Nuevo Laredo, which lies over the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, late on Tuesday, police said.

More than 80 people have been killed since January in the city of 300,000 people, which is on the front line of a turf war between traffickers from the western state of Sinaloa and the local Gulf cartel.

In another indication of the thriving drugs trade, the Mexican army seized 5.5 tonnes of cocaine worth an estimated 100 million dollar on Tuesday. The drugs had been stuffed in suitcases in an empty passenger jet from Venezuela that landed near the Caribbean town of Ciudad del Carmen.

In the western state of Guerrero, a 27-year-old man was killed and eight people were seriously injured, police said, after a man lobbed a grenade into a busy restaurant in the Pacific coast town of Petatlan, some 190 miles (300 km) southwest of Mexico City, early yesterday.

Witnesses saw two men arguing in the Lazaros and Goldo's bar shortly before the grenade was detonated at 1 a.m. No arrests were reported and it was not yet clear whether drugs gangs were involved, prosecutors said.

The victim died in hospital after the incident, the second grenade attack this week in Guerrero, which is a notorious transit point for drugs including South American cocaine en route to the United States.

On Monday unknown assailants tossed a grenade at a private home in the coastal resort of Acapulco, injuring five people.

REUTERS DH BD0600