Mexico seems to be descending into out-and-out civil war. This past weekend, employees of the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez, directly across the Rio Grande river from El Paso, TX, were gunned down as they were attempting to cross into the US.

The drug wars in Mexico took an ominous turn over the weekend when a pregnant US consulate employee and her husband were killed as they left a children’s birthday party in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s most violent city. Only minutes earlier gunmen also killed the Mexican husband of another member of the consular staff and wounded his two children.

While a number of US citizens have been killed in Mexico’s increasingly bloody drug wars between rival cartels, it is the first time an American government employee has been killed.

The parents were killed, their infant daughter survived. It’s not completely clear from this article why the drug gangs were chasing these people in particular.

According to the newspaper Diario de Juarez, gunmen chased the couple’s white van shortly after 2pm, shooting at the vehicle until it swerved out of control, crashing into oncoming traffic near the bridge.

At approximately the same time, the third victim, Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, 37, was killed as he travelled in another part of Juarez. The gunmen boxed in the man’s car, shot him and wounded his two children, aged four and seven, according to media reports.

The attacks occurred as the US State Department was taking the unusual step of authorising US government employees at Ciudad Juarez and five other American consulates in northern Mexico to send their families out of the region because of concerns over the increasing bloodshed. That announcement was in the works before the murders, officials said.

Our Secretary of State had this to say:

“These appalling assaults on members of our own State Department family are, sadly, part of a growing tragedy besetting many communities in Mexico,” said Mrs Clinton. Washington was committed to: “work closely with the government of President Calderon to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico,” she said.

But she had more pressing matters to attend to than a war on our border and diplomatic personnel being murdered. Like apartments being built in Jerusalem.