Mexico, February 28: Dozens of people have been killed in separate attacks in Mexico, as the government of President Felipe Calderon struggles to stamp out drug-related violence.
Nine men were killed and eleven others injured in Coahuila state, across the border from Texas on Saturday after gunmen opened fire inside two bars in separate attacks, AFP quoted the state prosecutors as saying on Sunday.
In Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso in the southern US state of Texas, five men lost their lives in an attack in a bar in the cartel-plagued city, said Chihuahua state prosecutors’ spokesman Arturo Sandoval.
Also, police found bodies of five men inside a trash container and alongside a highway in the resort city of Acapulco in the southern state of Guerrero.
Mexican Defense Department said soldiers on Sunday killed four alleged drug traffickers in a clash in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.
Mexican forces seized a car, 12 fire weapons, 12 grenades and radio communication equipment, the department stated.
In the Pacific coast state of Michoacan, police found the bodies of five men in different areas of the capital of Morelia, officials said.
On Sunday, Mexican police said they found four bodies at a house in the town of Tlalmanalco as the search for more bodies continued in the central state.
More than 35,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence since the Mexican president launched a military offensive against the country’s drug gangs shortly after taking office in December 2006.
According to Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chavez, Mexico’s criminal gangs and drug cartels killed more than 15,000 people in 2010, making it the deadliest year ever since the government’s crackdown.
The upsurge of violence comes despite the deployment of about 50,000 troops across the country.
——–Agencies