Killings Up Nearly 50% in Mexican Border City (Juarez)

A total of 1,700 gangland killings occurred in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez during the first seven months of the year, a figure that was up 47.6 percent from the same period in 2009, when 1,150 people were murdered, officials and press reports said. The January-July 2010 figure includes 18 murders that occurred over the weekend in Mexico’s murder capital. Ciudad Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, is the scene of a war for control of smuggling routes between the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels. Fifteen people, including two women, were murdered in the border city on Saturday. Three other people were killed on Sunday, Chihuahua state prosecutors said. July ended as the second-most-violent month of 2010 in the border city, with 291 homicides, or an average of eight per day, being registered...more