30 dead in worst weekend of Mexico violence this year

Well 25 died in a bombing in an Iraqi market and that's all over the news. The worst attack in months there. Meanwhile, a lot closer to home, 30 dead in a single day in Mexico gets little coverage.

At this point it is probably more dangerous to be a Mexican policeman than an American soldier in Iraq.

More than 30 people died in the worst weekend of violence this year in the northern Mexico state of Chihuahua, the scene of daily drug gang turf wars, police said Monday.
Heavily-armed assassins killed nine people in separate incidents late Sunday in the border town of Ciudad Juarez, local police said, following the slaying of 21 people the previous night -- including a baby and a four-year-old boy -- at a village dance in the town of Creel.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has killed 2,682 people since the start of the year -- nine more than in all of 2007 -- with nearly half in Chihuahua state, daily El Universal reported Saturday.

Ciudad Juarez -- across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, where local drug gangs are battling the powerful Sinaloa cartel -- has the highest murder toll, with some 800 so far this year, according to an AFP count.

Federal authorities have deployed more than 36,000 soldiers across the country since early 2007, including 2,500 in Ciudad Juarez, in an effort to combat drug trafficking and related violence.

But the murder rate has climbed dramatically in two years, from 1,410 in 2006.

30 dead in worst weekend of Mexico violence this year