Mexico drug traffickers make car bombs FROM Reuters UK

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican drug traffickers have built makeshift car bombs to attack police, troops and rival smugglers as the country's drugs war turns increasingly violent, police said.

Soldiers found two car bombs in a safe house in the city of Culiacan in western Mexico on Monday. One car was packed with cans of gasoline and another stuffed with canisters of gas, police said.

Both devices were wired to be detonated by cell phones, said a police official in Culiacan, capital of Sinaloa state, which is home to one of Mexico's biggest trafficking cartels.

"We believe these two car bombs were being designed to harm the military, the police and rivals," the official said on Wednesday. He declined to be named.

Any use of car bombs would be an escalation of Mexico's brutal drug war that has killed more than 4,200 people since late 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military-backed assault on drug cartels.