US anti-kidnapping expert kidnapped in Mexico – Yahoo News.
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The heads and bodies are found at separate places in Guerrero state, a hot spot in the country’s drug war. Governor says eight of the victims were soldiers and one was a former state police commander.
Local prosecutors said three more decapitated bodies were found in a village on the outskirts of the city, the Associated Press reported.
The find came two days after three gunmen were killed in a shootout with soldiers in Guerrero. Mexican media said the beheadings may have been intended as retribution.
Beheadings have become increasingly common around Mexico amid rising drug-related violence that has killed more than 5,300 people this year.
President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown against drug traffickers upon taking office two years ago, triggering clashes between security forces and gunmen and vicious feuding among rival drug gangs.
The coastal state of Guerrero, home to the Acapulco resort, has been one of the drug war’s more violent corners. Nearly 500 people have been killed there since January 2007, a month after Calderon announced his anti-crime offensive, according to a tally by the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute.
As part of his crackdown, Calderon has sent 45,000 soldiers and 5,000 federal police into the streets across the country. The offensive has produced thousands of arrests and some major seizures of drugs, cash and weapons, though there is no sign that any of the main drug gangs have been dislodged.
Most of the killings have resulted from turf wars among drug-trafficking organizations, which battle for the most coveted routes for smuggling into the United States.
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Police in Mexico have found nine decapitated bodies close to a highway in the southern state of Guerrero.
A local official said some of the victims were soldiers. Thousands of troops have been deployed across Mexico in anti-drug smuggling operations.
Nine heads were found earlier in plastic bags close to a supermarket, reportedly with a note warning of more decapitations to follow.
Nearly 5,400 people have been murdered in drugs-related violence this year.
Local media have reported that nine soldiers were abducted on Saturday as they left a nearby military base, close to the city of Chilpancingo.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed about 40,000 troops and police since December 2006 against the drugs cartels.
But Mexico’s top prosecutor has said that the violence is likely to worsen in 2009 as drug gangs split and fight for turf.
Officials say the increasingly gruesome nature of the violence shows that the drugs gangs are being squeezed, intensifying their internal squabbles.
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By GLORIA PEREZ
Associated Press
TOLUCA, Mexico – Eleven policemen have been shot to death near Mexico City in a three-day string of drug-gang attacks, prosecutors said yesterday.Mexico State prosecutor Alberto Bazbaz said that 10 suspects believed linked to drug gangs have been arrested in the killings, which mainly occurred on highways and at police checkpoints in the state that loops around Mexico’s capital.
Some of the suspects were carrying rifles and grenades at the time of their arrest.
Bazbaz said that many of the suspects were from the neighboring state of Michoacan, a hotbed of drug violence dominated by a drug gang known as “The Family.”
But he said that evidence indicates that low-level traffickers and criminals, rather than organized cartel hit squads, were responsible for the attacks. (more…)
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The drug was in Northern Baja has shown no signs of stalling as nearly 50 people were killed in another gruesome week in Tijijuana. The deaths are the result of ongoing gang wars between the drug laws. There’s been over 3000 homicides in the region this year. The rise in violence has been attributed to a number of factors. First, the Columbia/Miami entre has been severely limited by the US. Second, Columbians are now paying their foot soldiers with drugs instead of cash. Third, Calderon has significantly increased the efforts to clamp down on the drug trade, limited the opportunity to sell and escalating the need for violence. Finally, the US has an insatiabe demand for the narcotics that flow through the channel and, unfortunately, provides the guns and cash to fuel the trade. The local hard working citezens in Northern Baja are the ones that suffer.
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