CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, July 1 (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen in Mexico killed a top prosecutor, murdered 21 people in a shootout and dumped a severed head outside the house of a mayoral candidate days before elections, authorities said.
The violence unfolded in two states just south of the U.S. border and was the latest sign that Mexico’s drug war is growing more intense.
Gunmen killed Sandra Salas, a deputy prosecutor for the northern state of Chihuahua in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday night as she was being driven by bodyguards, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said.
Then on Thursday, unidentified men also left a head outside the house of the favorite for Ciudad Juarez mayor, Hector Murgia, who is running for Mexico’s main opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, before the vote in 12 states on Sunday.
President Felipe Calderon is under mounting pressure to control escalating drug violence that worries Washington and that is scaring off tourists and forcing some U.S.-owned factories to freeze investment plans.
Two drug gangs rumbled on a desert highway early on Thursday in a shootout that left 21 people dead in the northern state of Sonora, said Jose Larrinaga, a spokesman for the state prosecutor’s office.
"It happened 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the U.S. border," Larrinaga said.
Larrinaga said investigators don’t know what triggered the shootout, but the country’s cartels routinely battle for the smuggling routes used to get cocaine into the United States.
Mexican authorities are on high alert after hitmen dressed as marines ambushed and killed the front-runner candidate for governor in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas on Monday, in the worst sign so far of political intimidation by smuggling gangs. [ID:nN28512369]
Murguia, a former Ciudad Juarez mayor, faces accusations from rival politicians and rights groups of being in the pay of the city’s powerful Juarez cartel, which is fighting the Sinaloa alliance for control of trafficking routes in a battle that has killed some 5,700 people in the city since 2008.
More than 26,000 people have died in drug violence across Mexico over the past 3 1/2 years.
Calderon has repeatedly vowed to stick to his military-backed anti-drug strategy, relying on thousands of troops across the country to curb the power of drug cartels.
Adding to a climate of violence ahead of the elections, a mayor in the southern state of Oaxaca was killed along with another local official on Wednesday. The state prosecutor’s office said the attack on Nicolas Garcia, mayor of the coastal town of Santo Domingo de Morelos, was likely a robbery.
