Bombs Go Off in Mexican Cities

At least two car bombs exploded Friday near the television studios of Televisa in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of Tamaulipas state in northeastern Mexico, authorities said.

Mexican policemen and a soldier stand guard next to remains of a parked vehicle outside a studio of top broadcaster Televisa in Ciudad Victoria, the Mexican state of Tamaulipas August 27, 2010. A car bomb exploded outside the TV studio early on Friday, but there were no injuries, Mexican media and witnesses said.

Two bombs went off early Friday in the capital of the violence-wracked northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where 72 U.S.-bound migrants were slaughtered by gunmen earlier this week.

Neither bombing caused any casualties.

The first blast occurred shortly after midnight at the Ciudad Victoria studios of Televisa, Mexico’s dominant television network, knocking the station off the air and interrupting the power supply to the area.

While Televisa attributed the explosion to a car bomb, authorities have not confirmed that.

“There is material damage to the exterior. Inside, we don’t know, because soldiers and federal police have the zone condoned off and won’t let anyone enter,” Televisa news anchor Carlos Loret de Mola said on his Twitter account.

“The explosion shook buildings blocks away, power went down in the zone and we have not yet been able to re-establish the signal,” he said. “No more bullets ... no more grenades ... now, a car bomb.”

Within minutes, another bomb went off at the offices of the municipal transit department, some 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the Televisa complex.

Friday’s bombing was the third strike in less than a month on Televisa installations in Tamaulipas. The network’s outlets in the border cities of Nuevo Laredo and Matamoros suffered grenade attacks on July 30 and Aug. 15, respectively.

Also targeted on Aug. 15 was the Televisa complex in Monterrey, capital of neighboring Nuevo Leon state.

The car that exploded in front of the television studio was a red Chevrolet Corsica with Texas license plates, the attorney general's office said in a news release. The car in front of the transit office was a white Mazda, also with Texas license plates.

A soldier and investigators work at the site where a vehicle exploded outside the Televisa network in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Victoria. Another possible car bomb exploded outside a police station in San Fernando, also in Tamaulipas state and near the site where the bodies of 72 slain migrants were found this week.

Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas have been plagued by increasing violence from drug traffickers battling for control of smuggling routes into the United States and some cartels have resorted to bombings and kidnappings to influence media coverage of their activities.

Tamaulipas was the scene this week of the massacre of 72 undocumented Central and South American migrants trying to reach the United States.

The lone survivor at a ranch not far from the U.S. border told investigators the murders were committed by members of the notorious Zetas drug cartel.