14 Mexican drug gang members have been killed and eight others were injured in a gun battle near the US border that was one of the bloodiest shootouts in Mexico's three-year-long narcotics-war.
Rival factions of the local Arellano Felix drug cartel in Tijuana on the Mexico-California border fought each other with rifles and machine guns in the early hours of the morning, police said.
Two of the dead are believed to be senior hitmen for the Arellano Felix cartel.
Six men were arrested but the remaining survivors escaped.
President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and Baja California state on Mexico's Pacific coast since taking office in December 2006. Some 25,000 soldiers and federal police are deployed to fight cartels in drug hot spots across Mexico.
The army in Tijuana said it was on high alert for reprisals against soldiers and federal police following the shootout and the ensuing arrest.
The Arellano Felix gang was long the dominant drug-trafficking organization in Tijuana, smuggling drugs into California.
In 2007, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and there have been more than 900 this year.
