NUEVO LAREDO: A van packed with explosives blew up Thursday outside a police station in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of northeastern Tamaulipas state, causing some damage but no injuries, police said.

"The explosion damaged two Rural Police patrol cars that were parked nearby, but there were no injuries," the city`s Public Security chief Jose Ives Soberon Tijerina told AFP by telephone.

It was the second car bomb set off in Mexico in recent weeks, after an explosives-packed vehicle killed four people in northern Ciudad Juarez on July 15.

There were no immediate details on suspects in Thursday`s bombing, but violence related to drug trafficking is prevalent in Tamaulipas along with five other Mexican states along the US border.

Tamaulipas is a battleground for the rival Gulf and Zetas drug cartels, which are vying for lucrative smuggling routes across the border into the United States.
The Ciudad Juarez car bomb marked an escalation in Mexico`s brutal drug violence, which has left some 7,000 people dead so far this year.

More than 28,000 people have died in suspected drug violence across Mexico since President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown on organized crime three and a half years ago.

BDST: 9:28 HRS, August 05, 2010