Ciudad Juarez(Mexico): Suspected drug-related violence left 13 dead, including two women, in separate incidents in Mexico's violent northern Chihuahua state, local authorities said.
Heavily-armed men attacked a man and a woman as they got out of a car in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, forcing them up against a wall and shooting them at least 15 times, including a coup de grace typically used by drug gangs, local police said yesterday.
In a separate incident, police found a young woman s body, also in the city across from El Paso, Texas, in which more than 1,000 have been killed so far this year.
Other deaths included a man shot dead in a betting shop in Chihuahua, the state capital, and three male bodies carrying signs of torture and gunshot wounds found outside that city.
The area is the scene of battles between the powerful Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels and their offshoots, which are fighting for control of key trafficking routes in the United States, the world's biggest drug consumer.
The death toll from gangland-style killings around Mexico has escalated this year, with some 4,000 killed so far, according to national media, despite a government crackdown involving the deployment of some 36,000 troops.
