300 crowd border club after fleeing drug gang | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "300 men, women and children from the colonial ranching town of Ciudad Mier, a 10-minute drive from Texas, have taken refuge in the Lion's Club in this small city on the Rio Grande — fleeing for their lives from the gangland killers called the Zetas.
The refugees deserted Mier en masse during the past week after Zetas attacked in force to wrest it back from rival thugs of the so-called Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization. Businesses and houses were burned, refugees say, and innocents murdered. Government forces have not yet reacted, they say.
'Either the government doesn't want to act or they are waiting until the bands kill off one another,' said a refugee, who spoke on the condition his name not be used out of fear of the gunmen.
The Zetas began attacking Mier just hours after the killing by Mexican marines last Friday of Gulf Cartel boss Antonio Ezequiel Cardenas-Guillen, known everywhere as Tony Tormenta, or Tony Storm. Officials on both sides of the border have warned that Tony Tormenta's demise is all but certain to unleash havoc as rivals fight to replace him.
Events in Ciudad Mier suggest that the already vicious conflict of the past nine months between the Zetas and Gulf Cartel, who were allies for more than a dozen years, seems ready to tip into scorched-earth war."
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