Mexico says drug gangs not behind bomb attack
MEXICO CITY, March 25 (Reuters) - Mexico's attorney general said on Tuesday drug cartels were not behind a botched bombing in Mexico City last month, crushing the theory of city officials who had blamed narcotics smugglers for the attack.
A man carrying a small homemade bomb was killed on Feb. 15 when the device he intended to plant under the car of a city police chief went off prematurely. Nobody else died, although a suspected accomplice and a passerby were hurt.
"This type of device does not correspond at all with the modus operandi and the sophistication of organized crime gangs dedicated to drug smuggling," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told reporters.
Mexico City's top prosecutor, Rodolfo Felix, said last month that one of Mexico's violent drug cartels was behind the bombing, and city Mayor Marcelo Ebrard pointed the finger at the powerful Sinaloa alliance, based in northwestern Mexico.
The target of the bomb, police chief Julio Sanchez, had recently arrested at least 17 people linked to the Sinaloa cartel, which controls swathes of drug smuggling territory along the Pacific coast and is led by Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
The attack raised concerns that Mexico's powerful drug cartels, whose turf wars killed more than 2,500 people last year, could start a bomb campaign against President Felipe Calderon and his army-led operation to crush them.
Some analysts, however, questioned why drug traffickers, who have armies of professional hitmen, would hire a clumsy amateur who was caught on security cameras carrying the bomb and apparently set it off by mistake by moving it too much.
The attack may have been to do with score settling by low-level drug sellers and unrelated to any links they may have had with a bigger cartel, some commentators said.
Drug-related violence has killed more than 700 people so far this year, an even faster rate of murders than in 2007. (Reporting by Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Writing by Cyntia Barrera; Editing by Catherine Bremer)
