MONTERREY, Mexico — [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] reeled Monday from another bloody weekend of drug-related killings that was made even more horrible by the baffling massacre of 10 young people and children traveling in a pickup truck in Durango State.


With 21 people killed across the nation on Sunday, the only break in the bleak news was the announcement that a reputed street-gang leader had been arrested in connection with [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] with ties to the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juárez on March 13.


The young people slain in Durango were traveling from a farming community where they lived to the town of Los Naranjos to collect federal financial aid for students, prosecutors said in a statement.



A man in military garb waved the pickup to a stop, the authorities said. Then he and an unknown number of other attackers riddled the truck with bullets and threw grenades at the occupants.



The victims ranged in age from 8 to 21 — five girls and five boys from three families. Though the motive remained unknown, Federal Interior Secretary Fernando Gómez-Mont noted Monday that the Sinaloa drug gang had been waging a war in the region with the Zetas, former commandos and assassins who have splintered off from the Gulf cartel to form their own drug trafficking organization.
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