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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | May 2008 
Senior Mexico Policeman Dies Despite Army Presence
 PVNN
| | Some 20 city police officers have been murdered by drug gangs in Ciudad Juarez so far this year. | | |
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico - Mexican drug hit men killed a senior police officer in Ciudad Juarez despite a huge army deployment in the violent city across the border from El Paso, Texas, authorities said on Wednesday.
Gunmen with assault rifles on Tuesday night shot Saul Pena, who was due to be named one of city's five police commanders, as he left police headquarters.
"It seems they were waiting for him," said police spokesman Jaime Torres. "They shot him with AK-47s in the back, the stomach and the leg. He died in hospital this morning."
Some 20 city police officers have been murdered by drug gangs in Ciudad Juarez so far this year. Another 230 people have been killed in unprecedented levels of drug violence in the city since January.
President Felipe Calderon sent 2,500 soldiers and federal police to Ciudad Juarez in March with heavy weaponry and helicopters to quell the surge in drug murders as gangs fight over smuggling routes into the United States.
Soldiers have taken over many security tasks from the often corrupt city police, making dozens of arrests and seizing arms and narcotics. But drug-related murders continue, police say.
In the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, soldiers fought a gun battle with drug hit men near a military checkpoint on Tuesday night, the state attorney general's office said.
At least three people were killed during the clash, including a 9-year-old girl, according to Mexican state news agency Notimex.
Calderon has sent some 25,000 soldiers and federal police to fight drug cartels across Mexico since taking office in December 2006.
Last year there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico. So far this year, there have been more than 1,100.
(Reporting by Ignacio Alvarado in Ciudad Juarez and Robin Emmott in Monterrey; Editing by Xavier Briand) |
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