At least 41 killed as Mexico scrambles in drug war

Mexican authorities sent in an extra 1,800 police Saturday to fight the country's gruesome and deadly drug war, with at least 41 people slain over the weekend including 10 who were decapitated. Fully 1,800 federal agents were sent into Michoacan state on Saturday, in a battle there mainly with the Knights Templars, a splinter group of the La Familia drugs cartel. The reinforcements were backed by 170 vehicles, 15 ambulances and 4 MI and Black Hawk helicopters, the Public Safety office announced. National Security Council spokesman Alejandro Poire called it a "reinforcement operation faced with the possibility of greater mobilization by organized crime groups." "They are waging an absurd war, to the death, for control of criminal turf and drug trafficking routes to the United States," he stressed. Police in the northern city of Torreon said Saturday they found the headless bodies of seven men and three women in the back of an abandoned pick-up truck. Police chief Guillermo Flores told AFP that only one head, belonging to a woman, was found on site, and that the killers had placed it on the truck's hood...more