Gunbattle in Mexico injures 2 Americans in embassy car

An armored U.S. Embassy vehicle is checked by military personnel Friday after it was attacked on the highway to Cuernavaca. An armored U.S. Embassy vehicle is checked by military personnel Friday after it was attacked on the highway to Cuernavaca. Photo: Alexandre Meneghini Photo: Alexandre Meneghini Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Gunbattle in Mexico injures 2 Americans in embassy car 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

MEXICO CITY - Two U.S. officials were shot and wounded in the mountains outside Mexico City on Friday, but exactly who shot them remained unclear.

The Americans were traveling in a U.S. Embassy vehicle with diplomatic plates when they were caught up in a confused running gunbattle in which Mexican federal officers took part. The embassy vehicle was hit by more than 30 bullets, though it is unclear how many were fired by the federal police and how many by the gangsters chasing the Americans.

Both Americans were reported in stable condition with gunshot wounds at a Cuernavaca hospital, about 50 miles south of Mexico City. A Mexican naval captain who was travelling with them suffered slight injuries.

Who the Americans are, what jobs they perform in Mexico and what they were doing in the mountains far from the embassy all remain unclear.

"We are working with Mexican authorities to investigate," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement Friday. "We have no further information to share at this time."

U.S. ties in question

That stands in sharp contrast to the February 2011 ambush killing of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata and the wounding of agent Victor Avila, in another marked embassy vehicle on a northern Mexican highway. That attack drew a full scale investigation by the FBI and other U.S. federal agencies that led to the arrest of more than a dozen suspects within days.

Friday's shooting comes at a delicate moment for both Washington and Mexico City. President Felipe Calderon, under whose administration U.S. cooperation with Mexican security forces has been greatly bolstered, leaves office in little more than three months. Calderon's successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, has vowed to continue the cooperation, but no one can be certain how it will play out.

The U.S. cooperation in recent years includes intelligence sharing, tactical training and enhanced support for both Mexico's military and federal police, especially the elite units of Mexico's naval infantry, its marines.

Mexico's navy and federal police said in a joint statement that the two Americans and the Mexican officer were driving along a gravel road toward a navy training camp in the heavily wooded mountains when a carload of gunmen ambushed them.

The officials evaded the attackers and fled back to the main highway, where three more carloads of unidentified gunmen joined the chase. The shootout ended when Mexican marines called in by the naval officer arrived on the scene, the statement said.

It wasn't immediately clear how the federal police were involved, but the government statement said the car was shot "by personnel of the federal police who were in the area pursuing crimes." The federal officers involved were being questioned, the statement said, "to clarify the facts and, if warranted, absolve them of responsibility."

The Mexico City newspaper Reforma quoted an unidentified marine at the shooting scene as saying "It was a federal police aggression against unarmed marines." Some news reports suggested the federal police had been manning a roadblock at which the fleeing Americans had failed to stop.

Training officers

The federal police's entire 350-officer detachment at the Mexico City airport has been replaced following the June shootout in a passenger terminal in which officers shot and killed two colleagues in what turned out to be a dispute over control of a cocaine trafficking ring.

U.S. trainers and other personnel have been working closely with the Mexican military and police - and especially the navy's well-trained infantry brigades - in recent years amid Calderon's crackdown on organized crime. The $1.6 billion in U.S. aid spent under the Merida Initiative has largely been to train and equip the police and other federal security forces.

Both the federal police and army have played key roles in Calderon's offensive. But the navy's 7th Infantry Brigade, based in Mexico City, has often taken the lead in operations against top gangsters and especially against the Zetas gang, which is based in cities bordering South Texas.

The Cuernavaca area has ranked among Mexico's most violent since U.S. backed marines killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva in that city in December 2009. The drug lord's former lieutenants, including Texan Edgar Valdez Villarreal, went to war to succeed him. In recent months other gangs have moved in to take control of the area.

2010 attack

Today's attack is the third in two years on people carrying U.S. diplomatic credentials.

Prior to the ambush that killed Zapata, assassins in Ciudad Juarez, bordering El Paso, ambushed and killed an employee of the U.S. consulate and her husband in March 2010. The husband of another consular employee was killed in a separate though simultaneous attack. The victims were leaving a party at the house of yet another consular employee.

dudley.althaus@chron.com