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Mother pushing stroller in Texas hit with bullet from Mexico

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - A woman pushing her child in a stroller in downtown

El Paso, Texas, was struck by an assault rifle bullet fired from across the

border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on Tuesday, mayor John Cook said.

After Juarez police responded to a carjacking about half a mile from the

border, a gunfight broke out between police and the carjackers, Cook said. A

bullet -- a type used in assault weapons such as M16s -- penetrated and exited

the woman's calf, he said.

The unidentified woman, 48, who was shopping, was treated at a hospital and

released with minor injuries, and her child -- whose age Cook did not know --

was not hurt, he said. The mother, a Mexican citizen, is a legal U.S. resident

living in El Paso, Cook said.

"I don't think there's any reason for El Pasoans to panic or for anyone else to

panic," Cook said. "El Paso still remains a very safe large city."

About 50,000 people have been killed in raging drug violence in Mexico since

President Felipe Calderon launched an army-backed offensive against the

powerful cartels shortly after taking office five years ago.

More than 10,000 of those deaths have occurred in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico's

murder capital across the shallow concrete channel of the Rio Grande from El

Paso.

The incident on Tuesday marked the first time that a person in El Paso has been

struck by a bullet fired from neighboring Ciudad Juarez since the city began

its slide into an abyss of violence in 2008.

That year, Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel took on Juarez cartel rivals over

turf, littering the city of low-wage export assembly plants with its daily toll

of gunshot victims and mutilated corpses.

But rounds fired in Mexico's drug war next door have previously struck

buildings in the Texas border city.

Two years ago, bullets fired in a gunfight between a suspected drug gang and

Mexican authorities struck city hall, smashing a window. Rounds have also

struck a building at the University of Texas at El Paso campus, although no

injuries were reported.

Politicians in the United States have voiced fears of possible spillover

violence from Mexico, although El Paso, a sprawling southwest Texas city of

700,000 residents, was named the safest city of its size in the United States

for the first time two years ago.

And Cook said that violence in Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities

has been declining.

"It's unfortunate that a carjacking like this is going to get national

attention when Mexico is actually doing a pretty good job controlling the

violence," Cook said.

He said there is no indication that Tuesday's incident was cartel-related.

The ordeal prompted two elementary schools and a middle school near the border

to be locked down for half an hour, according to El Paso Independent School

District spokeswoman Renee De Santos.

(Reporting by David Crowder. Additional reporting by Corrie MacLaggan and Tim

Gaynor.)