Mexico, April 11: At least 28 people have been killed in the latest spate of attacks related to organized crime in northern Mexico amid failing efforts to stem drug violence in the country.
In the state of Chihuahua, 21 people were gunned down, including 10 in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s murder capital, which is located across the border from El Paso in the southern US state of Texas, AFP reported on Sunday.
A disabled man was reportedly among four people murdered in the first incident late Saturday after gunmen opened fire inside a house in Ciudad Juarez.
“Four were killed in the first incident. One of the dead bodies was found inside the residence and three others were inside an automobile parked outside the house,” municipal police spokesman Adrian Sanchez said.
Six more men were murdered at a gas station near the Rio Grande, which separates part of the US and Mexico.
In another incident, seven deaths were reported on Sunday in the Pacific coastal state of Sinaloa, which is plagued by drug-related violence for years.
The border city of Ciudad Juarez is known to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where over 6,000 people lost their lives over the past two and a half years.
The killings saw an increase in the border city of 1.5 million people in 2007, when over 300 people were killed, and then it more than tripled to over 1,600 in 2008, according to Chihuahua state Attorney General’s Office figures, with the number of killings soaring to 2,754 in 2009.
2010 was the deadliest year in violence between rival drug gangs since 2008 with more than 3,100 drug-related murders, according to the state figures.
The upward trend in violence comes despite efforts by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who launched a war on drug cartels in the country in 2006 and ordered deployment of about 50,000 troops across the country.
——–Agencies