Tijuana Police Chief, Guard Assassinated in Ambush : Mexico: Official is killed by gunmen in a passing vehicle. It is unclear whether the attack is linked to last month’s slaying of a presidential candidate.

The director of Tijuana’s municipal police was assassinated Thursday night in a bloody ambush that also claimed the life of one of his bodyguards, authorities said.

Federico Benitez Lopez, the chief of Tijuana’s uniformed police force, was shot and killed about 9 p.m. on one of the border city’s busiest thoroughfares as he was returning from a false bomb threat at the Tijuana airport, municipal police officials said.

A witness said two men in a red Ford Bronco pulled up beside Benitez’s police pickup truck, opened fire with a large-caliber weapon and then roared away. Benitez, authorities added, was struck three times, in the neck, chest and arm, as his pickup spun out of control.

Witnesses said that Benitez was alive when officers rushed him to the Tijuana Red Cross but that he died of his wounds a little more than an hour later. His bodyguard died at the scene.

The slaying comes little more than a month after the assassination in the same city of Mexico’s ruling party presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio. Colosio, who had been the front-runner in the presidential race, was gunned down after a campaign rally March 23.

It was not immediately clear whether Benitez’s death was in any way connected to Colosio’s. Tijuana also has been racked in recent months by a wave of narcotics-related violence. Early last month, five people were killed in a shootout between a federal police unit and state police who were said to be protecting a drug lord. Among those slain in the cross-fire was a federal police commander.

Benitez had been a high-profile figure in an aggressive campaign to clean up corruption in the municipal police. Since he was appointed by Tijuana’s mayor about a year and a half ago, he has fired at least 300 police officers for suspected misconduct--more than had been fired in the entire three years of the previous administration.

A lawyer by training, Benitez, who was in his mid-40s, had worked in the private security business before becoming police chief. His agency is one of three patrolling the Mexican city, and he has been widely quoted in recent weeks regarding the role his officers played in the preliminary investigation into Colosio’s death.

In the aftermath of that shooting, city police officers helped transport the suspected assassin, Mario Aburto Martinez, to federal police headquarters after a tense confrontation with federal police. They also obtained a trunk containing Aburto’s possessions, including a diary, and turned it over to federal investigators.

The role of Benitez’s agency in the Colosio investigation, however, has been limited.

In the wake of Thursday night’s shooting, Tijuana was swarming with police, as roads to the border and the nearby cities of Ensenada and Tecate were shut off.

However, no arrests had been reported by late Thursday night.

*

Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this story.