BY MICHAEL WEBSTER: SYNDICATED INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER NOV 23, 2008 at 4:30 PM PST

Five people died in a Tijuana, Mexico bar shooting and gunmen killed a man being treated at a hospital in drug-related violence this weekend, officials said.

The five gunmen who entered the bar shooting in the Mesa de Otay section of Tijuana claimed the lives of three men and two women, according to the Attorney General's Office. Nine others were reported injured.

Baja California authorities said three masked gunmen walked into the Bar Utopia in Tijuana over the weekend where many Americans where present, the mask gunmen wearing bullet proof vests began spraying gun fire randomly using AK-47 assault rifles. The terrorist killed two men and a woman at the scene, while the other two women died later at a hospital. The Tijuana police told the Laguna Journal that there where patrons present during the shooting that claimed to be Americans. One American woman said she and others feared for there lives as Mexican gun men burst into the bar firing indiscriminately.

During the same weekend gunmen shot and killed a patient that was reported to be receiving treatment at a local Tijuana private hospital, the Baja California Attorney General's Office reported, just hours after the nightclub attack left five dead.

According to Tijuana police the hospital attack took place inside the intensive care unit of Hospital del Prado, located a few miles from downtown TJ.

Tijuana newspapers reported that the patient killed was being treated for a gunshot wound. The Attorney General's Office said the patient was a man, 20 to 25 years old. Hospital Administrators declined any comment.

According to a municipal police report, three assailants wearing face masks and dressed in black began firing high-caliber weapons inside Bar Utopia about 9:45 p.m. Two other gun men where reported seen outside the bar at the time of the shooting.

Mexican drug cartel gunmen have assaulted and killed hospital patients in both Ciudad Juarez, and Tijuana, where violence in recent weeks has raised this year's death toll to more than 2000 for both cities. 

Access to the state-run Hospital General in TJ has been restricted since April 2007, when gang gunmen aliened with the dangerous and powerful Arellano Felix cartel unsuccessfully tried to recover a fellow gang member who had been shot earlier by police in a gun battle that killed 16 gunmen fighting for power. One of the survivors was being treated at the hospital, authorities said. They killed two police officers in their failed attempt.

An El Paso hospital was locked down at the beginning of the year while a wounded high ranking Mexican police official was being treated.

The police commander who was shot several times in an ambush was under heavy police protection. A precautionary measure local official said they took because of the wave of violence in neighboring Ciudad Juarez.

Cmdr. Fernando Lozano Sandoval, of the Chihuahua State Investigations Agency, was shot in the Mexican city just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. He was one of three police officials shot in Juarez over two days, and the only one to survive.

Lozano, identified by the El Paso County Sheriff's Office as a U.S. citizen, was taken to El Paso County's Thomason Hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center within 280 miles. 

For related articles by Michael Webster Google or click on www.lagunajournal.com