Mexico, March 07: At least six people have been killed in separate drug-related attacks in northern Mexico, including three at a bar near the US consulate in Ciudad Juarez, officials say.
The three were killed on Sunday after gunmen opened fire on customers at the Muro bar near the consulate in Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso in the southern US state of Texas, the Associated Press quoted spokesman for Chihuahua state prosecutors Julio Castaneda as saying.
It was the second attack on a bar in the crime capital Ciudad Juarez in a week, Castaneda said. Chihuahua state police have also found the bodies of three other people in a separate drug-related violence in the town.
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 years.
Since December 2006, more than 34,200 people have lost their lives in the violence and bloody war between feuding drug cartels in Mexico.
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.
Also on Sunday, the Mexican military stated that a suspected high-ranking drug trafficker has been arrested outside Tuxpan, north of beach resorts in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit.
The suspect was carrying 1,000 doses of heroin along with cocaine, methamphetamines and a weapon on a federal highway as he was trying to smuggle drugs into the United States.
——–Agencies