http://theintelhub.com/2011/04/26/mexican-drug-cartels-place-roadside-bomb-in-brownsville-texas/ Mexican Drug Cartels Place Roadside Bomb in Brownsville, Texas
Last Sunday night, authorities in Brownsville, Texas, discovered an explosive device on Highway 77, just minutes from the Mexican border. The Brownsville Bomb Squad was dispatched to neutralize the explosive device.
The local authorities and the media are dismissing the event, calling the device poorly made. Apparently, it was made with a modified hand grenade, and its being reported that it did not have a detonator.
Nevertheless, there are a lot of similarities between the explosive devices used along the Mexican border towns like Reynosa and Matamoros to the one found on this side of the border, in Brownsville, Texas. The grenade appears to be an older pineapple style device, used very often by Mexican military and Mexican drug cartels.
These types of bombs have been found numerous times in Matamoros and in Reynosa, Mexico.
Authorities are not providing very much information about what other devices were attached to the grenade.
However, on the Mexican side of the border, the drug cartels typically use booby-trapped grenades attached to other explosives or fragmenting material, mostly with the intent to terrorize people crossing bridges or driving on highways.
The improvised explosive device might have not been armed; however, the drug cartel members mightve been planning a dry run or a test. Further, they may have been planning to return and install the rest of the explosives and detonators.
Last year, from Brownsville, Texas, both DEA and DHS agencies launched a campaign to capture and kill Gulf Drug Cartel leader Ezequiel Cardenas (aka Tony Tormenta) and his partner Jorge Eduardo Costilla (aka El Coss).
The US Government offered a $50 million reward for the capture of the two drug lords. Cardenas was killed a few weeks later, but El Coss escaped and is currently running the Gulf Drug Cartel. The explosive in Brownsville mightve been retaliation by the Gulf Drug Cartel because the DEA was behind the death of Cardenas, or perhaps their rival cartel, Los Zetas, placed the explosive as a false flag tactic in order to blame their Gulf cartel rivals.