Mexico intensifies anti-drug crackdown following killings of top police officials
Mexico has stepped up its fight against drug cartels following the assassination of top police officials who had taken a tough stance against drug lords.
Edgar Eusebio Millan Gomez, Mexico's acting chief of federal police, was shot several times by masked gunmen outside his home last Thursday and died later at a nearby hospital.
According to police intelligence, the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the several organized crime groups that smuggle cocaine, locally made methamphetamines and other illegal drugs to the US, was behind the killing.
Gomez was the head of the country's anti-drug trafficking task force and was responsible for coordinating large-scale operations to break organized crime rings, including drug trafficking. Gomez also helped capture one of Mexico's most feared kidnappers, Andres Caletri, in 2000, and helped disband two notorious abduction rings.
On Friday, the drug gangs struck once again and in a brazen move, shot dead Esteban Robles, who was head of a department that specializes in abduction cases.
And, again on Saturday, suspected drug gunmen ambushed and riddled a Mexican senior police official, Juan Antonio Roman, with bullets outside his home.
Following the killing of Roman, the fifth police official to be assassinated in just over a week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has vowed to redouble efforts to crush drug cartels and dispatched 3000 heavily armed soldiers and military vehicles to Sinaloa. Recently, Calderon launched a crackdown on the drug cartels, sending over 25,000 armed police personnel and soldiers to several border towns to fight drug gangs and put an end to drug smuggling.
Calderon has also called on the US Congress to approve a $1.4 billion counternarcotics aid package for Mexico, known as the Merida Initiative.
The Mexican President said the drug gangs are hitting back "because they know we are hitting their criminal structure and operations. They know that Mexicans will no longer live in submission, and we are determined to take back our streets."
"We have to come together to confront this evil, we Mexicans have to definitively and categorically say, 'That's enough!' We are determined to recover streets that never should have ceased being ours," Calderon said.
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