A CAR bomb exploded outside the local affiliate of Televisa TV network in the northeastern city of Ciudad Victoria, with no casualties, military officials and the network said.
“Fortunately none of our colleagues were wounded,” said Carlos Loret de Mola, the host of the Televisa morning news show. The blast however damaged equipment and the station was unable to broadcast locally, a station source told AFP. Ciudad Victoria is the capital of Tamaulipas state, which borders the US state of Texas.
The Gulf of Mexico drug cartel has been engaged in a bitter turf war for control of Tamaulipas smuggling routes into the United States with the Zetas drug cartel. Police and soldiers surrounded the area of the explosion, and a military source told AFP that the blast rocked surrounding buildings.
Televisa, Mexico’s most watched TV network, has had affiliates attacked twice this year, most recently in the northern industrial city of Monterrey two weeks ago. A van packed with explosives blew up outside a police station on August 5 also in Ciudad Victoria, causing some damage but no injuries.
And an explosives-packed vehicle killed four people when it detonated in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez on July 15. On Tuesday, Mexican authorities found 72 bodies at a Tamaulipas ranch that police believe belong to illegal migrants from Central and South America. Authorities blamed the Zetas cartel for the slaughter.
An injured Ecuadoran man claiming to be the sole survivor of a massacre alerted the military and said the migrants had been kidnapped and killed for refusing to work for the Zetas.
The Zetas include Mexican elite military deserters and the US government has called them the most dangerous organised crime syndicate in Mexico. More than 28,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a nationwide crackdown against drug traffickers.
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