Narco Gunmen Storm Holiday Inn in Monterrey, Mexico, Abduct Guests

Gunmen stormed two hotels in downtown Monterrey, Mexico, in the middle of the night and abducted 7 guests and workers in one of the boldest attacks yet against the staggered tourist economy in the border region of Mexico.

The hotels were the Holiday Inn Centro and the Mision Hotel.

Here's the New York Times report on the attack.

Monterrey, a major business center for both Mexican and American companies, is about 150 miles south of the Texas border. Border towns from Tijuana to Matamoros have been stunned by drug violence in the last two years, and tourism has been devastated.

Nearly all of the violence, which has accounted for about 20,000 murders in Mexico in two years, has been between drug gangs or drug gangs and police and military, though innocent bystanders have often been killed. This year, violence escalated sharply in Monterrey, but an attack on a major tourism/business hotel is very unusual.

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