Killers disguised as soldiers attack AG's office in Acapulco

Houston Chronicle:

Gunmen disguised as soldiers attacked two offices of the state attorney general in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco and killed at least seven people on Tuesday, defying a military crackdown on violent drug gangs.

President Felipe Calderon held an emergency meeting of his security Cabinet, and the Mexican government later issued a statement that called for unity in waging a "frontal war" against the narco-traffickers.

"The federal government will not withdraw nor cede in the face of attacks by organized crime," it said, attributing Tuesday's killings to an attempt by drug gangs to "settle the score."

Gunmen filmed both assaults, even tracking the victims as they died, Reforma newspaper reported.

Since taking office Dec. 1, Calderon has declared all-out war on the traffickers, ordering 25,000 troops to fan out across several Mexican states where most of last year's 2,000 gangland-style killings occurred. He has deployed 6,700 troops and federal police to Acapulco and surrounding Guerrero state, where several hundred people were killed in drug violence last year.

Despite the heavy presence of soldiers on the streets of Acapulco, however, drug violence has continued largely unabated.

Just last Saturday, residents of a slum outside Acapulco came upon plastic bags containing a dismembered corpse. Since last spring, the decapitated heads of at least six victims have been dumped in the resort and around the state, including one head that washed up on an Acapulco beach.

Tourists have also been hit. On Saturday, suspected traffickers opened fire in a hotel lobby in Acapulco, wounding a Canadian couple. Last month, a Canadian teenager was killed in mysterious circumstances.

The authorities blame much of the violence on rival drug gangs fighting for control of coastal smuggling routes and the growing domestic market in cocaine and other drugs.

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Calderon faces some steep challenges in bringing the rule of law back to Mexico. The narco terrorist appear to be adapting the tactics of the Islamist religious bigots as well as their PR program. This is a drug based insurgency being fought against Mexico and it has creeped into the US with gangs like the Zetas who are former special forces troops from the army.