Mexican Gunmen Kill Sailor's Family

Mexican Navy forces stand guard outside the family home of Melquisedet Angulo Córdova on Tuesday.

MEXICO CITY -- More than a dozen hit men burst into a house in eastern Mexico early Tuesday and murdered several family members of a navy sailor who was feted as a national hero for having died in last week's battle that killed drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva, Mexican police officials said.

In an unprecedented and grisly escalation of Mexico's drug war, gunmen killed the mother, aunt and two brothers of 3rd Petty Officer Melquisedet Angulo Córdova in a small town in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco, just hours after the sailor was buried with a military honor guard.

The hero sailor's sister was badly wounded and remains in critical condition, Rafael González, the attorney general of Tabasco state, said at a news conference. "We will not rest until we find those responsible for these killings," he said.

The killings represent an unprecedented and grisly escalation of Mexico's fight against powerful drug gangs. Until now, family members of drug gangs or the soldiers and cops who fight them were largely considered off limits. Mexican gangs have started to target the families of rival drug lords, but never on a scale like this.

"This is the first time that any thing like this has happened," said Raúl Benitez, a professor at Mexico's UNAM university and an expert on Mexico's armed forces.

The killings are also a huge embarrassment for President Felipe Calderón and the Mexican military. Last week's navy operation that killed Mr. Beltrán Leyva had temporarily quelled growing criticism from analysts and opposition politicians that the president's strategy of sending 45,000 army troops to take on drug gangs in parts of the country had had little impact on either the drug gangs' leadership or their business operations.

Mr. Calderón's office had no immediate response to questions about how the killers obtained the information about the man's family or whether procedure about keeping officials' names confidential would be changed.

The death of the sailor's family members, however, will raise new doubts about the government's ability to wage a war on drug cartels.

—John Lyons contributed to this article.

Source: The Wall Street Journal David Luhnow and José de Cordoba