Grenade Attack Wounds 2 Police Officers in Cd Victoria

Two police officers guarding city hall in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northeastern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, were wounded in a grenade attack, prosecutors said.

The attack occurred around 7:00 p.m. Wednesday when the assailants threw a grenade at the building’s main entrance, wounding the two officers, a spokesman for the Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office said.

“The most seriously wounded is a policewoman who was on guard duty. She was taken to a hospital and we have learned that she is out of danger,” the AG’s office spokesman said.

Officers from different agencies cordoned off the area around city hall after the attack and army troops went out on patrol across the city.

Users reported shootings in different parts of Ciudad Victoria on social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, but the incidents have not been confirmed.

The Gulf coast state of Tamaulipas has been battered this year by a turf war between the Gulf drug cartel and former allies Los Zetas, a conflict that has left hundreds dead.

The violence has intensified in Tamaulipas since the appearance in Monterrey, the capital of neighboring Nuevo Leon state, in February of giant banners heralding an alliance of the Gulf, Sinaloa and La Familia drug cartels against Los Zetas.

After several years as the armed wing of the Gulf cartel, Los Zetas went into the drug business on their own account and now control several lucrative territories.

The cartels arrayed against Los Zetas blame the group’s involvement in kidnappings, armed robbery and extortion for discrediting “true drug traffickers” in the eyes of ordinary Mexicans willing to tolerate the illicit trade as long as the gangs stuck to their own unwritten rule against harming innocents.