MEXICAN ATTORNEY GENERAL SAYS DRUG CARTELS RECRUITING HIT MEN IN THE U.S.

MEXICO CITY Mexican drug cartels are recruiting hired killers in the
United States, since many of their Mexican gunmen are now behind bars,
Mexico's federal attorney general's office said Tuesday.

The country's anti-drug prosecutor, Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, said in
a news release that "the grand majority" of gunmen for the Sinaloa cartel
are U.S. citizens who live in the United States.

Vasconcelos said the Sinaloa cartel's gunmen have come primarily from a
U.S. group of hired killers called "Los Lobos." He did not say where the
group is based in the United States nor what led Mexican authorities to
believe the gunmen are U.S. citizens.

The Sinaloa cartel, based out of the Pacific coast state of Sinaloa, is led
by alleged drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from prison in
2001. He is one of Mexico's most-wanted fugitives and U.S. authorities have
offered a $5 million reward for his capture.

Mexican police say Guzman has waged a bloody war with the Gulf cartel for
control of the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo,
Texas. Nuevo Laredo has been besieged by violence with a record 175
executions so far this year.

Vasconcelos said while the Sinaloa cartel is looking north for recruits,
the Gulf cartel is heading south.

"Las Zetas," a group of ex-elite Mexican soldiers who now work for Mexico's
Gulf drug cartel, has been recruiting former kaibiles, former members of an
elite Guatemalan paratrooper counterinsurgency unit known for its grueling
jungle-survival training.

The anti-drug prosecutor said Las Zetas have been hit so hard by recent
arrests "that these groups are trying to recover their death squads by
recruiting" in Guatemala "because they no longer have the ability to
respond to the violence that they are (confronting)."

Osiel Cardenas, the reputed lead of the Gulf cartel, was captured in March
2003 and remain in a maximum security prison outside Mexico City.