Mexican drug wars claim 34 new victims

TIJUANA, Mexico, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Mexican authorities say a weekend of gang violence has left 34 people dead in the border town of Tijuana, including three police officers and a 4-year-old boy.

The decapitated bodies of the police officers were found alongside six other beheaded victims in a residential neighborhood, the result of a brutal turf battle between rival drug gangs, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday.

At a grocery store in eastern Tijuana Saturday night gunmen shot and killed two boys, one 4 years old and another 13 years old, along with two adults.

Several hours later the 18-year-old nephew of Baja California's tourism secretary was found shot to death inside a vehicle in an upscale neighborhood a few miles east of downtown.

"It's a very difficult situation," said Alberto Capella Ibarra, Tijuana's secretary of public safety during a Sunday morning radio interview.

The weekend deaths bring to 360 the number of people killed in the drug wars since late September. The death toll for all of 2007 was 337.