Collateral Damage: 300 crowd border club after fleeing drug gang in Mier, Mexico

Another price of the drug war. People have to abandon their hometown.

300 crowd border club after fleeing drug gang in Mier, Mexico | World | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "Refugees from a town mired in gang warfare can only flee — but still fear — for their lives.

More than 300 men, women and children from the colonial ranching town of Ciudad Mier, a 10-minute drive from Texas, have taken refuge in the Lion's Club in this small city on the Rio Grande — fleeing for their lives from the gangland killers called the Zetas.

The refugees deserted Mier en masse during the past week after Zetas attacked in force to wrest it back from rival thugs of the so-called Gulf Cartel narcotics smuggling organization. Businesses and houses were burned, refugees say, and innocents murdered. Government forces have not yet reacted, they say." Nov. 12, 2010