MEXICO: Suspected hitmen shot dead a senior police commander in the violent Mexican state of Sinaloa yesterday, despite the arrival of hundreds of police reinforcements as drug-related killings surge.
Sinaloa's police commander Salomon Diaz was killed as he drove through a suburb of the state capital Culiacán, home to one of the country's main trafficking cartels.
President Felipe Calderon has deployed some 25,000 troops across Mexico to combat drug gangs, but this has failed to stop drug-related murders, which have soared to unprecedented levels, with more than 1,700 killed in the first six months of this year.
More than 300 people have died in drug-related violence in Sinaloa state so far this year, including 45 in the past two weeks, as drug gangs fight each other and the army.
