Cartel assault kills 20 near U.S. border

MEXICO CITY — Dozens of cartel gunmen attacked a town hall in northern Mexico, triggering a running battle with security forces that left 20 dead by Sunday in a fresh sign of the deteriorating security around the country.

The assault started about noon on Saturday, the eve of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s first anniversary in office. Polls show that Mexicans regard the failure to curb violence as the greatest weakness of the generally popular leftist leader.

The attack in the town of Villa Union, about 40 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, highlighted how the splintering of Mexico’s top cartels has sparked more violence. It was believed to be carried out by the Cartel of the Northeast, an offshoot of the once-powerful Zetas, which is based in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Several groups that spun off from the Gulf and Zetas cartels are fighting with one another in Tamaulipas and nearby states.

The attackers swept into Villa Union in at least 14 trucks, some of them armored and bearing the cartel’s logo, according to news reports.

The gunmen unleashed a furious battle at the town hall, peppering the facade with bullets. The attackers fled after about 90 minutes, authorities said.

Mexican police and soldiers, backed by army helicopters, chased them in an operation that stretched into Sunday morning, local authorities said. The Associated Press reported that the dead numbered four state police officers, 14 cartel members and two civilians kidnapped and killed by the attackers, according to Coahuila Gov. Miguel Riquelme. State authorities earlier had put the death toll at 21.

It was not immediately clear why the town was targeted. Coahuila was ravaged by attacks by the Zetas in the early part of this decade, but has not been among Mexico’s most violent states more recently.