Grenade attack in Mexico injures 12 people

The government is blaming the attack on drug gangs

MONTERREY, Mexico — Assailants tossed a grenade into a square in Mexico's northern business city of Monterrey on Saturday, injuring 12 people in an attack the government blamed on drug gangs.

Unidentified men on foot threw the grenade from the edge of a square where people had gathered in the municipality of Guadalupe, which is part of Monterrey, police said. Four children were among the injured.

"There was a loud explosion and people started screaming and running," a witness, who declined to give her name, told local radio.

The explosion was the fourth from a grenade during the weekend in Monterrey, one of Latin America's premier business cities. No one was injured in the earlier attacks.

Television images showed crying children rushed to the hospital, their heads wrapped with white bandages, but no one was seriously injured, the mayor of Guadalupe Ivonne Alvarez told local newspaper El Norte.

Mexico's Interior Ministry condemned the incident and promised a crackdown. It blamed organized crime for the grenade attack in a reference to drug cartels vying for smuggling routes into the United States and Mexico's home-grown drug markets.

Monterrey had been an oasis of calm but has been sucked into Mexico's drug war since the start of this year. One of the three grenade attacks on Friday across Monterrey came in the center of the city near the U.S. consulate, which had been targeted at least twice with grenades in 2009.

The government blames a split between the powerful Gulf cartel and its former armed wing, the Zetas, for much of the violence, which also has surged in neighboring Tamaulipas since the start of the year.

More than 29,000 people have died in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon launched his army-led offensive on drug cartels in late 2006.