MEXICO CITY – A strong earthquake struck central Mexico on Monday, swaying tall buildings in the capital and sending office workers into the streets.

The quake rattled nerves in a city already tense from a swine flu outbreak suspected of killing as many as 149 people nationwide.

“I’m scared,” said Sarai Luna Pajas, a 22-year-old social services worker standing outside her office building moments after it hit. “We Mexicans are not used to living with so much fear, but all that is happening — the economic crisis, the illnesses and now this — it feels like the Apocalypse.”

Co-worker Harold Gutierrez, 21, said the country was taking comfort from its religious faith, but he too was gripped by the sensation that the world might be coming to an end.

“If it is, it is God’s plan,” Gutierrez said, speaking over a green mask he wore to ward off swine flu.

Televisa television network quoted Mexico City officials saying there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The quake had a magnitude of 5.6 and was centered near Chilpancingo, about 130 miles (210 kilometers) southwest of Mexico City or 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the resort of Acapulco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

USGS earthquake analyst Don Blakeman said the quake was felt strongly in Mexico City because the epicenter was relatively shallow and the ground under the capital — which is built on a former lake bed — tends to intensify shock waves.

“Distant quakes are often felt” strongly in the city, he said.

The USGS revised the quake’s magnitude down from its preliminary estimate of 6.0, and said its depth was 30 miles (50 kilometers).

Tourists also streamed out of hotels in Acapulco and congregated on sidewalks and medians for several minutes. Local Civil Protection officer Silvia Rodriguez said there were no injuries.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico has detained one of its most wanted drug suspects, Vicente Carrillo Leyva, who allegedly was the second in command of the powerful Juarez cartel, the federal Attorney General’s Office said Thursday.

The announcement came hours before the Obama administration’s top security officials and their Mexican counterparts were set to discuss ways to stop arms smuggling across the border as well as new strategies for fighting the drug cartels that have fueled violence in both countries.

Federal police said Carrillo Leyva, 32, was caught while he was exercising in a park in a posh Mexico City neighborhood early Wednesday.

Carrillo Leyva is the son of drug kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who was one of Mexico’s most important drug traffickers before he died during plastic surgery to change his appearance in 1997.

Amado Carrillo Fuentes was nicknamed “the Lord of the Skies” because of his success in sending planeloads of cocaine to the United States.

After his death, Amado’s brother Vicente took over the cartel and Amado’s son, Vicente Carrillo Leyva became second-in-command, the Attorney General’s Office said.

Officials displayed Carrillo Leyva to the press at a news conference early Thursday, bringing a young man in glasses and a track suit before flashing cameras.

A week ago, the Attorney General’s Office named Carrillo Leyva to a list of 24 of the country’s most-wanted narcotics suspects and offered a reward of 30 million pesos ($2.1 million) for his capture. The same amount was offered for the capture of the cartel’s alleged leader.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva acknowledged to authorities that he was the son of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, said Marisela Morales, who is in charge of combatting organized crime at the Attorney General’s Office.

“Carrillo Leyva is considered one of the heirs of the Juarez Cartel after the death of his father,” she said.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva used an alias, Alejandro Peralta Alvarez, and was passing himself off as a businessman, said Federal Police Commissioner Rodrigo Esparza. But authorities were able to track him down through his wife, who did not change her name. The government had records showing her sister was married to Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, a brother of the cartel leader.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder were to meet Thursday with Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora and Interior Minister Fernando Gomez-Mont in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Soldiers last week arrested another figure on the most-wanted list, Hector Huerta, who was accused of controlling the flow of drugs through the northern city of Monterrey for the powerful Beltran-Leyva cartel.

BOSTON – Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt lost her bid for asylum more than four years ago, and a judge ordered her deported. Instead, Zeituni Onyango stayed, living for years in public housing.

Now, in a case that puts the president in a tough position both personally and politically, Onyango’s request is being reconsidered under a little-used provision in U.S. immigration rules that allows denied asylum claims to be reheard if applicants can show that something has changed to make them eligible.

Such as the ascension of her nephew to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country.

“If she goes back to Kenya, she is going to be much more in the limelight, and that, in and of itself, could put her at a greater risk. The chances of her going back and keeping a low profile are gone at this point,” said Boston immigration attorney Ilana Greenstein.

Onyango, 56, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, moved to the United States in 2000. Her first bid for asylum was rejected, and an immigration judge ordered her deported in 2004; she continues to live in public housing in Boston.

In December, a judge agreed to suspend the deportation order and reopen her case. An initial hearing is scheduled Wednesday in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston.

Obama has said repeatedly that he didn’t know his aunt was living in the United States illegally and believes that laws covering the situation should be followed. If she wins asylum, he could look soft on immigration enforcement. If she loses, he could face criticism from immigrant advocacy groups.

The White House says Obama is staying out of it.

“The President believes that the case should run its ordinary course, and neither he nor his representatives have had any involvement,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said last week.

Over the past decade, relatively few Kenyans have sought asylum in the United States: 223 in fiscal year 2007 — compared with 7,934 asylum requests from China and 10,522 from El Salvador — and only 50 Kenyans that year were granted asylum. From 1998 through 2007, about 20 percent of Kenyans who applied were granted asylum, according to an Associated Press review of immigration records.

People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.

Onyango’s reasons for seeking asylum have not been made public, and her immigration hearing will be closed at her lawyer’s request.

Kenya has been fractured by violence in recent years. In 2008, more than 1,000 people were killed in the East African nation following a disputed presidential poll, which saw a Luo candidate, Raila Odinga, declared loser to President Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, the largest tribe in Kenya.

Since Kenya gained independence from Britain in 1963, periodic tensions have arisen among the Luos — Onyango’s tribe — and some of Kenya’s other tribes, including the Kikuyus.

J. Patrick Kelly, an international law professor at Widener University, said the United States views Kenya as fairly stable. The country acts as a regional diplomatic and economic hub and hosts the only headquarters for a United Nations agency outside the West, the U.N. Environment Program.

Onyango could improve her chances of winning asylum if she can argue successfully that some in the Kenyan government may perceive — because of her relationship with Obama — “that she may have some level of political power and be able to transfer that power” to her tribe, Kelly said.

Onyango’s lawyer, Margaret Wong, may also argue that she needs to stay in the United States for medical reasons. Onyango, who has been photographed walking with a cane, has some kind of a neurological problem, said Mike Rogers, Wong’s spokesman.

In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” Obama affectionately referred to Onyango as “Auntie Zeituni” and described meeting her during his 1988 trip to Kenya.

Onyango has not responded to requests for interviews. Her case is being closely watched by people on all sides of the immigration debate. Some critics say her status has already damaged the president’s credibility on immigration issues.

“The president’s moral authority has been compromised by his aunt’s situation,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Americans have the right to expect aliens to respect our law, to leave when they are supposed to and not thumb their nose at the legal system.”

But immigrant advocates say opponents are unfairly using Onyango’s case as political fodder.

“Whether it’s the president’s aunt, my aunt or your aunt — anybody who’s seeking asylum is seeking that status for a very important reason,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “We are always worried that a person whose asylum claims are rejected, that they end up in a situation where they are a victim of violence.”

Associated Press writer Tom Maliti in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.

MEXICO CITY – Mexican soldiers have detained one of the nation’s most-wanted drug cartel lieutenants.

Army Gen. Luis Arturo Oliver says Hector Huerta Rios was detained Tuesday in a suburb of the northern industrial city of Monterrey. The capture was announced hours before the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on a two-day visit to Mexico.

Huerta Rios was included on a “most-wanted” list of 24 top traffickers and 13 of their lieutenants that officials published Monday. Authorities had offered rewards of up to $2 million for the drug lords and up to $1 million for the lieutenants, including Huerta Rios. It was not clear if a reward was paid in this case.

MEXICO CITY – Andres Bermudez, who made history by becoming the first migrant living in the United States to win a Mexican mayorship, has died of cancer. He was 58.

Bermudez, a flamboyant lawmaker for President Felipe Calderón’s National Action Party, or PAN, died Thursday, the party said in a statement. He had battled stomach cancer since March.

He died at a hospital in Houston, Texas, where he was receiving treatment since December, the daily newspaper El Sol de Zacatecas reported.

Bermudez first crossed illegally into the United States in 1973, hidden in a car trunk with his pregnant wife. He then worked his way from field hand to labor contractor in California. He invented a tomato-planting machine that earned him the nickname “Tomato King” and made him a fortune.

Bermudez made history in 2001 when he was elected mayor of his hometown of Jerez, in the northern state of Zacatecas.

He was stripped of that victory by the Federal Electoral Institute because he had not met residency requirements, but won the mayorship again in 2004 after Zacatecas legislators changed state laws to let part-time residents seek public office.

Bermudez always dressed in black, from his hat to his Tony Lama boots, and was known for his gruff-talking style and flamboyant personality. Those traits provoked harsh criticism from some of Jerez’s city council members, who accused him of being arrogant and confrontational.

In 2006, Bermudez, who shuttled between his ranch in California and Jerez, won a seat in the lower house of Congress for the PAN.

Palestinians walk amidst dust from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israel's military operations in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Thursday.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – The United Nations will quickly raise money for emergency repairs in the Gaza Strip, the world body’s humanitarian chief promised Thursday after witnessing what he called shocking destruction from the three-week war between Israel and Hamas.

But U.N. aid chief John Holmes and another senior U.N. official acknowledged they have no fallback plan if reconstruction is snagged by the power struggle between Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers and their moderate Palestinian rivals in the West Bank.

Hamas, which seized power in Gaza by force in June 2007, insisted Thursday that it will not share control over reconstruction projects that initial estimates have said could cost up to $2 billion.

The international community, however, is reluctant to funnel huge sums to Hamas, calling for the group to form a joint government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Prospects for such a deal remain slim.

Israel has said one of the key objectives of its offensive against Hamas was to halt weapons smuggling. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets at southern Israel over the past eight years, and Israel says most of the weapons and explosives came in through smugglers’ tunnels from Egypt.

Any cease-fire deal will be durable only if the basic demands of both sides are met. Israel insists on anti-smuggling guarantees, while Hamas wants open Gaza borders to ensure delivery of vital supplies.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico accused its former drug czar Friday of taking $450,000 from a cartel he was supposed to destroy, going public with a scandal that deals a serious blow to the country’s U.S.-backed drug war.

Noe Ramirez is the highest-ranking law enforcement official detained yet as part of Mexico’s sweeping effort to weed out officials who allegedly shared police information with violent drug smugglers. The corruption scandal is the biggest to rock the Mexican government in more than decade.

Although the arrest complicates President Felipe Calderon’s nationwide crackdown on the drug trade, Attorney General Eduardo Medina said it also proved the government’s commitment to rooting out corruption.

That commitment could be key to ensuring continued U.S. support for its drug fight. The U.S. Congress conditioned 15 percent of a still-to-be-released $400 million aid package on Mexico’s efforts to clean up its police force.

U.S. investigators work closely with their Mexican counterparts, sharing information with those who have been closely vetted. The Drug Enforcement Administration hasn’t said if it plans to pull back on cooperation, given the questions surrounding whom to trust.

But Thomas Schweich, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, said the revelations suggest Mexico is aggressively dealing with its corruption problem.

“I find the whole situation encouraging. If you are a corrupt official, you are no longer immune to prosecution no matter how high up you are,” said Schweich, who now works for the Bryan Cave law firm in St. Louis. “It shows a lot of political will on the part of Calderon.”

Medina said Ramirez accepted $450,000 from a member of the Pacific cartel, who offered to pay him similar amounts each month for alerting the drug gang to planned police operations. It was unclear if the subsequent payments were ever made. The cartel member is now cooperating with investigators, Medina said.

Ramirez was named assistant attorney general for organized crime in 2006 when Calderon took office, and resigned in July at Medina’s request. No corruption allegations were raised at the time – federal officials said his resignation was part of a law enforcement shake-up by the Calderon administration.

Ramirez was helping to lead Calderon’s nationwide offensive to take back territory controlled by drug cartel.

MEXICO CITY – Interpol is sending a special investigative team to Mexico to determine whether sensitive information from its database on criminals and terrorists was leaked to drug cartels, the agency said Wednesday.

Interpol launched the probe after Mexican federal police official Ricardo Gutierrez Vargas was placed under house arrest as part of an investigation of law enforcement officers who allegedly shared police information with traffickers.

Gutierrez Vargas directed the international police agency’s National Central Bureau in Mexico, where he had access to Interpol’s database of information on suspected terrorists, wanted persons, fingerprints and DNA profiles, among other data, the Lyon, France-based agency said.

Interpol’s Web site says that officers of the National Central Bureaus are connected to its police communications network so they can share crucial information on criminals and criminal activities daily.

Meanwhile, the agency is standing by its man in Mexico: “Interpol can categorically state that it has never been given any reason to question the integrity of Mr. Gutierrez Vargas.”

An official of the federal Attorney General’s office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be cited by name, said the allegations against Gutierrez Vargas did not involve purported leaks of Interpol information, suggesting the data he allegedly passed to criminal groups was domestic police intelligence.

The Attorney General’s office is responsible for Interpol’s office in Mexico.

Gutierrez Vargas’ detention is part of “Operation Clean House,” a government effort to weed out corruption exposed by the arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, a reputed Sinaloa cartel lieutenant.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Seven people are dead after a string of gruesome attacks in the Mexican border city of Juarez.

State police say a man’s burned and headless body was found dumped in front of a police station. His severed hands lay next to his body, each holding kitchen lighters. A note left behind was directed to the Aztecas drug gang.

Police later found two men and two women executed in a sport utility vehicle parked outside a Social Security clinic. And a woman’s body was found stuffed in a black trash bag.

Police chased a truck that opened fire on a state vehicle, causing a car crash that killed a bystander and injured four others.

All of the deaths were Monday. Police are investigating.

Biggest haul from a drug cartel on record

Soldiers guard arms captured in an operation against the Gulf cartel in Mexico City on Friday.

MEXICO CITY – The Mexican army on Friday announced that it has made the largest seizure of drug-cartel weapons in Mexico’s history.

The cache of 540 rifles, 165 grenades, 500,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 sticks of TNT was seized on Thursday at a house in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, Mexican Assistant Attorney General Marisela Morales said.

“The seizure is the largest in the history of Mexico involving organized crime,” Morales told reporters at Defense Department headquarters.

The weapons in the latest seizure belonged to the Gulf drug cartel, an official said after Morales made her statement.

Soldiers detected the cache when they chased suspects into the home after the men refused orders to stop, Morales said. Three men were detained.

It was unclear whether the raid was related to an FBI intelligence report obtained by a Texas newspaper in October that warned the Gulf cartel was stockpiling high-powered weapons in Reynosa to prepare for possible confrontations with U.S. law enforcement.

MEXICO CITY – Mexico detained a former senior police official on suspicion of aiding drug traffickers as well as an alleged founder of a vicious gang of drug cartel hit men on Friday.

The announcements came on another day of extreme violence in Mexico. In the northeast, police mistakenly opened fire on a family of six, seriously wounding a teenage girl. In the west, inmates rioted, killing six. And police in Tijuana found three more bodies accompanied by messages that appeared to be from drug traffickers.

Police arrested Jaime Gonzalez Duran, also known as “The Hummer,” in the northern city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

Gonzalez Duran is allegedly one of the founding members of the Zetas, a group of army deserters who went to work as hit men for the Gulf drug cartel. Federal Police Commissioner Rodrigo Esparza said Gonzalez Duran deserted from the army in 1999 and was a top lieutenant to current Zeta leader Heriberto Lazcano.

Also Friday, prosecutors announced that Rodolfo de la Guardia Garcia, the No. 2 official in the Federal Agency of Investigation from 2003-2005, has been placed under house arrest for 40 days as investigators look into the possibility he leaked information to the Sinaloa cartel in return for monthly payments in dollars.

De la Guardia was elected to Interpol’s executive committee in 2002 but was removed from that post by the Mexican government in 2004, the Lyon, France-based Interpol General Secretariat said in a statement Friday.

The statement said Interpol was never informed as to why the Mexican government removed him and said that during his tenure “Interpol was never given any reason to question his integrity.”

It stressed that “members of the Interpol Executive Committee are national law enforcement officials employed and paid for by their national authorities. They are not staff members” of the international police body.

De la Guardia’s detention by the Attorney General’s Office was part of the Mexican government’s “Operation Clean House,” which aims to weed out corruption that came to light after the January arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, a reputed Sinaloa cartel lieutenant.

Former federal police commissioner Gerardo Garay and three other officials of the Public Safety Department were arrested earlier, though officials have not revealed the allegations against them.

In the past two weeks, the Sinaloa cartel also has been linked to four Mexican military officers and one soldier, as well as five officials in the organized-crime unit of the Attorney General’s Office, which oversees the agency that employed de la Guardia Garcia.

President Felipe Calderon has long acknowledged corruption among the federal police and soldiers leading Mexico’s anti-drug campaign. These announcements suggest corruption still reaches high in the ranks of law enforcement despite decades of crackdowns.

The Sinaloa cartel is one of several criminal gangs waging a savage battle for control of lucrative routes used to bring illegal drugs to consumers in the United States. Hundreds of people have been killed, often decapitated, across northern and western Mexico. The death toll among police is particularly high, leaving officers fearful and jittery.

In the northern city of Monterrey on Friday, police mistakenly opened fire on a family of six after confusing their vehicle with a getaway car used by armed robbers. Seriously wounded was a 13-year-old girl shot in the head and chest, said Nuevo Leon state Security Secretary Aldo Fasci Zuazua. Her father was shot in the shoulder and hand, while the mother was grazed by a bullet in the head. A 2-year-old boy suffered minor injuries and two other children, 4 and 6, were treated for shock and released.

In other violence, six prisoners died and two inmates were injured in a riot early Friday in a prison in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan, the Televisa television network reported. State authorities gained control of the prison shortly after the uprising. Mazatlan is in Sinaloa state, from which the Sinaloa cartel gets its name.

In the border city of Tijuana on Friday, three bodies were found alongside messages apparently from drug traffickers, Baja California’s state attorney general’s office said. Another man was found riddled with bullets hours later.

More than 4,000 people have been killed this year across Mexico as drug gangs lash back at Calderon’s national crackdown on organized crime.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government arrested and deported record numbers of illegal immigrants — nearly 350,000 — in the past year, authorities say. It has also naturalized a record number of new Americans during the same time period, more than 1 million.

Bush administration officials consider these to be great accomplishments within a system that President-elect Obama calls “broken and overwhelmed” on his transition Web site.

“We are seeing the kinds of results that the country hasn’t seen for many years,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said last month.

When Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform in 2007, the administration kicked up its enforcement of the immigration laws already on the books. The government also hired more people to process applications for immigrants who want to enter the country legally.

These enhancements led to increases in arrests of illegal immigrants and employers who hire them; decreases in the amount of time it takes to process immigration applications — it now takes 9-10 months for naturalization applications, compared with 16-18 months before that. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has reduced its backlog to 1.1 million, which is down from its biggest backlog of 3.6 million in 2004; it’s on track to eliminate the backlog by October 2009.

The government recently awarded a five-year, $491 million contract to IBM to convert a paper-based immigration processing system to an electronic system.

There are about 11 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., which reflects no increase from the previous year, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. It was recently discovered that Obama’s aunt is among the estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally.

The woman, Zeituni Onyango, had been instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya. She has been living in public housing in Boston and is the half-sister of Obama’s late father. Federal officials are prohibited from talking about her case, citing privacy laws. “If she is violating laws, those laws have to be obeyed,” Obama said in a television interview Nov. 2.

“Obviously that doesn’t lessen my concern for her, I haven’t been able to be in touch with her. But I’m a strong believer you have to obey the law.”

But to solve the immigration problem completely, Chertoff — who oversees immigration — has said the next administration will need to go back to Congress for comprehensive reform.

Pressure to revisit immigration reform will build quickly from Latino supporters, immigration groups and some business interests. Larger Democratic majorities could help to move a bill through Congress, but those majorities will be built, in part, with Democrats from conservative districts who are wary of going too far. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said Democrats may have to give up some of their priorities in immigration reform to get an agreement, such as giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

———

On the Web

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: http://www.ice.gov

USCIS: http://www.uscis.gov

Change.gov: http://change.gov/agenda/immigration/

Juan Camilo, son of Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, embraces a photo of his father at the end of a memorial service at the Campo de Marte military field in Mexico City on Thursday. Mourino, one of Mexico's top pointmen in the war against drug trafficking, died when a government jet crashed Nov. 4 into a Mexico City street.

MEXICO CITY – Two flight recorders from a plane crash that killed Mexico’s No. 2 government official were sent to the U.S. for examination, officials said Thursday, amid widespread speculation — but no evidence — that drug cartels were to blame.

Both “black boxes” were found where the Learjet 45 slammed into rush-hour traffic in a posh Mexico City neighborhood, Transportation Secretary Luis Tellez said at a news conference. Five people on the ground and nine people on the plane were killed in Tuesday’s crash, including Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino.

Officials say they have few clues as to why the plane suddenly dropped from the evening sky.

But they have been unusually open in publicizing details of the investigation, trying to discourage conspiracy theories that thrive in a country on edge from relentless news of drug-related shootings, kidnappings and beheadings. The violence has surged during a 2-year-old army and police offensive to wrest control from drug cartels.

The 37-year-old Mourino, one of President Felipe Calderon’s closest confidants, was Mexico’s equivalent of vice president and domestic security chief. Also on the plane was former anti-drug prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, who had been the target of at least one assassination attempt.

“Nobody is more interested than me in the truth emerging and the cause of this incident being cleared up,” Calderon said at a memorial ceremony for the dead.

Tellez said experts would need at least a week to analyze the plane’s voice and data recorders for clues to what went wrong.

The crash occurred in clear weather, and in their last recorded radio conversation, the plane’s flight crew calmly discussed radio frequencies and speed with controllers. The tape went silent just as radar lost the plane’s altitude reading.

“Everything was normal on the flight, and a few seconds before the accident, something happened that significantly altered” the situation, said Gilberto Lopez, a pilot overseeing the probe. “At this moment, all the possibilities are potentially important.”

He said experts are following the normal lines of investigation for any crash, including possible human error, mechanical failures, maintenance problems or turbulence caused by other aircraft.

Experts from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority are in Mexico helping with the investigation.

On Thursday, Calderon’s office said that U.S. President-elect Obama had expressed his condolences for the deaths in a phone call with Calderon, who had called to congratulate Obama on his victory.

In an editorial Thursday, El Universal newspaper urged people to wait for results of the investigation before jumping to conclusions. But it also noted that Mexico’s “history is filled with assassinations that have never been cleared up or whose resolution does not deserve the trust of public opinion.”

In an unrelated incident, a small plane owned by a flight school made an emergency landing in a field just outside Mexico City, injuring both people aboard the craft. There was no immediate information on their condition or the cause of the mishap.

MEXICO CITY – A small plane crashed in a wealthy Mexico City neighborhood on Tuesday, killing the nation’s powerful interior secretary and at least seven others, and setting dozens of cars ablaze.

Juan Camilo Mourino, 37, was one of President Felipe Calderon’s closest advisers, but has been embroiled in scandal since taking office in the midst of Mexico’s violent fight against drug cartels. He was in charge of the country’s security.

“With his death, Mexico has lost a great Mexican, intelligent, loyal and committed to his ideals and his country,” Calderon said. “I ask all Mexicans that they don’t allow any event, no matter how difficult or painful, to weaken them in the pursuit of a better Mexico.”

Presidential spokesman Max Cortazar said Mourino and a group of advisers were returning from the city of San Luis Potosi when the plane went down.

Officials say the crash appeared to be an accident, but Calderon said his administration would await the results of a full investigation.

The Learjet 24 set fire to about two dozen vehicles on a street in the posh Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood in an area filled with tall office buildings. Officials evacuated about 1,800 people from area offices.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said all those aboard the plane were killed and that more people may have died on the ground.

Hundreds of police, firefighters and soldiers swarmed the scene, which was littered with the burned-out hulks of vehicles and pieces of what appeared to be bodies.

Eight bodies were recovered and at least 40 people were injured, seven of them seriously.

Civil aviation officials were investigating the cause of the crash. Transportation Secretary Luis Tellez said no distress signal had been registered from the plane.

In Baja California, a beheading and 9 shot to death

MEXICO CITY – Two human heads have been found with threatening messages in central Mexico, police reported Friday, as a 1-year-old girl was seriously wounded and two adults killed in a shooting on the northern border.

A Mexico state police official in Cuautitlan, just outside the capital, said one head turned up in a box left in the parking lot of the station.

It was accompanied by a message warning that federal police and members of the drug gang La Familia will be beheaded, said the official, who was not authorized to give his name.

State prosecutors in the western state of Michoacan, where La Familia is based, said another head was discovered Friday in an ice chest in the port city of Lazaro Cardenas. Tape covered the eyes and an attached message read: “From the Gulf Cartel.”

A wave of drug-related violence has been sweeping Mexico, and drug gangs are increasingly decapitating their victims to send a warning to rivals and authorities.

Prosecutors in Baja California state said police in the border city of Tijuana found another decapitated head in a plastic bag near the victim’s body.

They also reported that two adults were killed Friday when assailants riddled their pickup truck with bullets on a Tijuana street. A 1-year-old girl riding with them was hit by multiple rounds from an assault rifle and was hospitalized in critical condition.

Police also found nine people shot to death in Playas de Rosarito, just south of Tijuana.

Five men were killed at a veterinarian’s office, two municipal police officers were found dead in a sport utility vehicle, and a man and a woman were found shot to death on a roadside, prosecutors said in a statement.

Also in Rosarito, authorities detained Ricardo Estrada Perez, an alleged lieutenant of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, Regional army commander Gen. Alfonso Duarte said. No formal charges have been filed against him.