抖阴ap

Tijuana, Mexico – Unknown assailants gunned down a Baja California Norte state policeman Thursday in this northern border city, authorities said.

The state attorney general’s office said in a statement that the body of officer Daniel Valenzuela, 37, was discovered inside a late-model vehicle that had been abandoned on a street. With the slaying of Valenzuela, who was shot several times in the head, the number of policemen killed by gunfire within the past month in this state bordering California has risen to three.

State and federal authorities have been attempting to halt a spate of violence in several towns of Baja California Norte, especially Tijuana, where two American businessmen were recently kidnapped.

One of them, Chinese-born George Kwok Choi Chu, remains missing despite a massive search operation involving law enforcement agencies on both sides of the border.

Chu is the owner of Choi’s, a Tijuana-based seafood wholesaler, and was kidnapped Monday outside his business after arriving in a car with California plates.

Last week, a Korean-born U.S. businessman was kidnapped while driving to work in Tijuana, but managed to escape from his captors, who were demanding a ransom of $2 million.

Separately, authorities in the southern Pacific coast state of Guerrero stepped up security Thursday in the resort city of Acapulco and other tourist areas in response to a wave of violence that has left at least three dead and more than a dozen wounded over the past 72 hours.

The most recent victim, Mexican businessman Roberto Herrera, was gunned down in Acapulco Wednesday at his motorcycle dealership, which was packed with domestic and foreign vacationers because of Holy Week.

Another two people died and 17 were wounded in a grenade attack Wednesday in the coastal town of Petatlan, about 165 kilometers (102 miles) northwest of Acapulco.

The attack took place around 1 a.m. Wednesday, when unidentified assailants hurled the grenade into a bar then crowded with people celebrating the birthday of a municipal employee.

These incidents have further contributed to the wave of violence that for weeks has racked Acapulco and other tourist areas of Guerrero, where drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal outfits are known to operate, police said.

President Vicente Fox’s administration responded to the uptick in violence in Guerrero by extending his “Safe Mexico” plan to that area last year. The crime-fighting initiative, which initially involved deployment of federal police and troops to a few states in the north of the country to crack down on weapons dealers and drug-trafficking and kidnapping gangs, has had mixed results.

Violence attributed to organized crime left more than 1,500 dead last year across Mexico.