Gunmen kill two migrants on U.S.-Mexico border

Fri Mar 30, 2007 2:39 PM ET

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Unknown gunmen fired on a truck packed with suspected illegal immigrants in southern Arizona early on Friday, killing two people and wounding a third, police said.

The gunmen killed a man and a woman traveling in a pickup truck near Green Valley, some 30 miles south of Tucson, Pima County Sheriff's Department said.

Spokeswoman Dawn Barkman said the dead were believed to be Mexican immigrants traveling with three family groups from the poor southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Barkman said two children were among at least 14 people packed into the extended-cab pickup truck.

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Mar 30, 9:16 PM EDT

Two charged in ambush attack on immigrants in Arizona

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
Associated Press Writer

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Gunmen apparently trying to seize a smugglers' truckload of drugs attacked a pickup hauling 23 suspected illegal immigrants early Friday, killing two people and wounding another, authorities said.

Within hours, Border Patrol agents tracking footprints found two men along with three high-powered weapons near a campsite about a half-mile south of where the shooting occurred, said Richard Kastigar, Pima County sheriff's criminal investigations chief.

After questioning Friday afternoon, both men admitted to having fired high-powered weapons into the truck and were charged with two counts each of homicide and 21 counts each of attempted homicide, Kastigar said.

Witnesses inside the pickup and its camper shell substantiated the events, even though none of the survivors interviewed was able to identify the gunmen, according to Kastigar.

Rosario Humberto Araujo-Monarrez, 21, and Martin Esrain Flores-Gaxiola, 18, from the Mexican state of Sinaloa, were being processed before being booked into the Pima County Jail and other charges could be pending, Kastigar said.