Three People Found Dead In Violent Mexican Border City

Police in the violence-wracked city of Nuevo Laredo on the Mexico-U.S. border found the bodies of three people shot to death in two separate attacks. Marco Antonio Palomo, a 31-year-old businessman, was shot at least nine times outside his convenience store, said Jose Gaznarez, a police commander for Tamaulipas state, which includes Nuevo Laredo.Palomo, whose store was located a block from a house where police rescued 43 kidnap victims last year, was shot in front of his 8-year-old daughter. The girl was waiting for her father in a car, Gaznarez said. The discovery of his body came hours after police found the corpses of a man and a woman who had been shot to death and dumped in a trash-strewn lot. Tamaulipas state investigator Oscar Sepulveda said the man and the woman, who have not been identified, were carrying small packages of drugs in their pockets.Violence in Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, has spiked since early 2005, and U.S. and Mexican authorities say two powerful drug cartels battling for control of the area's key smuggling corridors into the United States are to blame.