Gunmen fire on Mexican mayor`s convoy

Texas: Mexican police arrested four armed men on Monday accused of firing at the mayor`s convoy in Matamoros, a northern city bordering Texas in the grips of drug cartel violence.

Mayor Leticia Salazar escaped unscathed from Sunday night`s shooting, which took place as she was arriving home in a sport-utility vehicle accompanied by two other vehicles and eight bodyguards, said an official from the Tamaulipas state prosecutor`s office.

Herminio Garza, interior secretary of the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, said the gunmen apparently attacked the convoy "by mistake, thinking it was a (rival) group."

The mayor`s car was not hit by any bullets, Garza told Milenio television.

Federal police detained four men at dawn on Monday after stopping a suspicious vehicle without license plates and with the lights off.

The suspects confessed to attacking Salazar`s convoy, the police said in a statement. Salazar is a member of the conservative and opposition National Action Party.

The shooting came a month after a dummy grenade was tossed in the parking lot of city hall in Matamoros, a city of almost 500,000 across the Texas town of Brownsville.

Matamoros is known as a bastion of the Gulf cartel. The city and the rest of the state have been hit by a wave of shootings in recent weeks blamed on infighting among the gang`s splinter groups.