Mexico, August 26: Attackers armed with AK-47s shot dead five youths outside a house in Ciudad Juarez Tuesday afternoon, local police said, adding to 17 more deaths in the border city in the past 24 hours.
Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, is the epicenter of spiralling suspected drug violence which has left almost 10,000 dead since the start of last year, despite a military crackdown on the country’s warring drug gangs.
More than 1,100 people have died in Ciudad Juarez since the start of the year, according to an AFP count based on police reports, despite the deployment of some 8,500 troops there.
The latest deaths included four double murders, and the shootings of a 15-year-old boy and a police officer, said the deputy attorney general’s office of northern Chihuahua state.
Two others also died in separate attacks elsewhere in the same state.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 36,000 troops countrywide since the end of 2006 in a controversial crackdown on organized crime, but drug violence has continued to soar.
–Agencies