Cartels lash out at Mexican crackdown to drug trafficking
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A series of brazen attacks in Mexico attributed to powerful drug cartels – targeting public officials, police, and even the military – has put the nation on edge, stirring debate about the nation’s strategy to combat trafficking, and possibly spurring deeper US involvement in combating Mexico’s increasingly violent traffickers. The Associated Press reports a string of recent attacks points to cartels’ anger over President Felipe Calderón’s recent initiatives to combat the illegal drug trade. Since Mr. Calderón declared war on traffickers by dispatching more than 24,000 soldiers and police to the state of Michoacan in December, drug-related violence has escalated, with events of the past week raising alarm throughout the nation. The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his office in Mexico City. Mexicans were particularly shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners fleeing their school during a grenade-and-gun battle between traffickers and soldiers that lasted for nearly two hours in [the town of Apatzingan] in President Felipe Calderon’s home state of Michoacan. Drug trafficking organizations are widely assumed responsible for Monday’s assassination in Mexico City of José Nemesio Lugo Félix, a top intelligence official for the attorney general’s office. According to The Dallas Morning News, Mr. Lugo Félix worked with the National Center for Planning and Analysis to Combat Organized Crime, which combats drug trafficking, for just one month before being gunned down in the streets of the capital. More : csmonitor.com |