Human rights activists and relatives in the violent Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, across from Laredo, Texas, blamed the army and National Guard troops in the deaths of a nurse and an 8-year-old girl.

The relatives said over the weekend that the victims were apparently caught in the crossfire of gun battles with suspected drug cartel vehicles being pursued by military patrols. Nuevo Laredo has long been dominated by the ruthless Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the old Zetas gang.

The Nuevo Laredo Human Rights Committee, an activist group, said in a statement late Sunday that another civilian was killed during another military car chase in the city. The National Guard is a military-trained and led force overseen by the Defense Department.

Civilian prosecutors in the border state of Tamaulipas – where Nuevo Laredo is located – refused to confirm or deny the three separate incidents that occurred Friday and Saturday. Federal prosecutors and the Defense Department didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The shooting deaths, if confirmed, would mark the second time in two weeks that Mexican military forces have killed civilians. It would also bring to three the number of children or adolescents killed in incidents involving military forces: an 11-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy were among six migrants killed, apparently by soldiers, on Oct. 1 in the southern state of Chiapas.

The first incident in Nuevo Laredo happened late Friday when a nurse, her husband and son found themselves on a roadway where soldiers were pursuing suspects’ vehicles.

The dead woman’s husband, Víctor Carrillo Martínez, told local press that “there was a confrontation” and his wife died “in the crossfire.”

At that moment, he said soldiers passed the family’s vehicle, but did nothing to aid them. “They went as if nothing had happened,” Carrillo Martínez said.

The Rights Committee said the 46-year-old nurse received a bullet wound to the head. Her husband said health care personnel told him “they were large caliber bullets used by soldiers.”

A day later, on Saturday, an eight-year-old girl and her grandmother were driving to a stationery store when they were caught in the middle of a pursuit in which soldiers or National Guard officers were chasing suspects.

The grandmother told reporters that a military vehicle was pursuing an SUV; her car got jammed in between the two and the military opened fire.

“When I looked, the car was covered in blood,” the grandmother recalled. “I looked at the girl and I said, ‘she’s bleeding out’.”

“I screamed, screamed at the soldiers, but because they didn’t want to stop, they didn’t help me,” she said.

The grandmother described them as soldiers, but her daughter said they were National Guard officers.

The confusion is understandable; the National Guard was created in 2019 under putative civilian command, but they have largely been recruited from military ranks and given military training. In September, control of the force was handed over to the military, and they usually wear military uniforms.

The commission said that, in a third case, a young man’s tortured body was found in a truck that the army and National Guard had been pursuing; it said no weapons were found in the vehicle.

“Nobody wants to touch the military”  

Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office Sept. 30, gave the military an unprecedentedly wide role in public life and law enforcement; he created the militarized Guard and used the combined military forces as the country’s main law enforcement agencies, supplanting police.

But critics say the military is not trained to do civilian law enforcement work.

The army has been implicated in previous killings in Nuevo Laredo, where shootouts in the streets are not uncommon. In 2023, the Defense Department said 16 soldiers would be tried on military charges related to the killing of five men in Nuevo Laredo that year.

The May 18, 2023 killing of five men was caught on security camera footage so graphic that even López Obrador described it as an apparent “execution.”

The head of the rights committee, Raymundo Ramos, said “the armed forces continue to have very large powers, very strong and above any civilian authority.”

“It appears nobody wants to touch the military in this country,” Ramos said.

In November 2022, gunfire in Nuevo Laredo forced the cancellation of school classes and an advisory from the U.S. Consulate to shelter in place. Earlier that year, the U.S. authorized the departure of families and some personnel at the consulate after drug cartel gunmen fired at the consulate building.

The first shootings under newly inaugurated President Claudia Sheinbaum occurred on Oct. 1 – Sheinbaum’s first day in office – near the city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala. The area is often used by migrant smugglers, but warring drug cartels also operate in the region.

Soldiers claimed they heard “detonations” and opened fire on a truck carrying migrants from Egypt, Nepal, Cuba, India, Pakistan and El Salvador. Six migrants were killed and ten were wounded.

Sheinbaum has pledged to stick with her predecessor’s “hugs not bullets” strategy of using social policy to tackle crime at its roots.

“The war on drugs will not return,” the leftist president told a news conference this month, referring to the U.S.-backed offensive launched in 2006.

AFP contributed to this report.