12 bodies found near Mexico school

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Leonor Merino said she was shocked Monday to find that what she thought was a pile of rags was a dozen bodies. Then she realized children soon would be passing by the carnage on the way to school, reports Richard Marosi.

So as class time approached at Valentin Gomez Farias Elementary School, Merino and her neighbors blocked the streets.

‘We closed the streets so the kids wouldn’t see all the dead bodies,’ Merino said hours after the bodies were removed. ‘Our hearts are trembling right now. We’re wondering what’s going to happen next.’

The grisly discovery capped four days of violence that has shaken the sprawling Tijuana metropolitan area and forced Baja California state officials to plead for more federal police to help control the city. Police on Monday also discovered four bodies in a vacant lot in eastern Tijuana. They had been carefully arranged in a circle and, like other such scenes, carried a narco-message.

Click here to read about the bodies found in Tijuana, and here to see our special report on Mexico’s drug wars, Mexico Under Siege.