The first victim of the day was bound with duct tape, tortured and shot once in the back of the head. His body was then stuffed in the trunk of a Buick Century, doused with gasoline and set ablaze, reported Reuters. A second was found burned beyond recognition, propped up on a makeshift pyre of blazing car tires on the outskirts of this sweltering city on Mexico's border with the United States. The two killings on Friday brought the murder toll to 119 this year in Nuevo Laredo, and the mayhem has put a strain between Mexico and Washington. Most of the dead are victims of an all-out war between powerful drug gangs from western Sinaloa state and the local Gulf cartel for control of a route bringing cocaine from Colombia and heroin and marijuana from Mexico into Texas. Scared local residents have watched the pace of killings accelerate since January. One placed a flickering candle at the site of the first murder on Friday just a few blocks south of the Rio Grande, then retreated indoors. --More 2249 Local Time 1949 GMT
