The recent car bomb set off in Juarez marked an escalation in Mexico’s drug wars. After police and medical workers were lured to the car’s location, the bomb was detonated using a cell phone, killing three innocent men. Similar tactics denoted Colombia and Iraq’s spiral into anarchy, but this was the first time a car bomb exploded in Mexico. It indicates not just a new tactic used by the drug syndicates, but also greater sophistication; as one US law enforcement official told WaPo: Someone knows what they’re doing.” Detonating a car bomb is much more involved than exploding, say, a pipe bomb. As reported by Global Post’s Ioan Grillo today, the explosives used in the July 15th bomb were likely stolen from a Texan company’s facilities in Mexico in February 2009.
Graffiti promises more car bombings, a particularly worrying prospect because car bombs victimize innocent civilians, not gang rivals.
