Drug gang hitmen blamed in hospital raid

The gunmen who stormed a hospital and battled police in this border city were hit men for the city's Arellano Felix drug cartel, authorities said Thursday.

Two of the four were taken into custody after gunbattles Wednesday in which three people died, according to Patricio Patino, assistant federal secretary of public safety. He did not say what happened to the other two.

Officials earlier reported that six to eight men had attacked the hospital to free a fellow criminal who had been arrested and was undergoing medical treatment.

The clashes began Wednesday when police tried to stop a truck carrying two alleged Arellano Felix gunmen suspected of plotting to attack members of a rival cartel, Patino told reporters.

The two men fled and began firing at their pursuers, eventually crashing into another vehicle. One of the suspects was killed, and another wounded and taken to Tijuana's public hospital.

Four other gunmen then headed to the hospital to free him, but were confronted by state police who happened to be escorting some prisoners for routine surgery.

A new shootout erupted and the gunmen fled inside, holing up in a ward for several hours until dozens of soldiers and federal police stormed in and subdued them.

Patino said none of the hospital's staff or patients was wounded during the standoff.

Officials initially said the gunmen had seized patients, but later said no hostages were taken.

In January, President Felipe Calderon sent 3,300 soldiers and federal police to the city as part of a nationwide offensive involving 24,000 troops in states plagued by execution-style killings and beheadings by feuding drug gangs.

The gangs were blamed for more than 2,000 murders nationwide in 2006 and have left a particularly bloody trail in Tijuana, where more than 300 people were slain last year.

In other violence Thursday, a group of gunmen killed five people, including three teenagers, on a ranch in southern Mexico, Chiapas state police spokesman Jose Domingo Perez said.

The assailants carrying assault rifles attacked early in the morning and the victims were all ranch workers. Police did not have a motive for the killings.

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Associated Press writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.