On Tuesday, gunmen armed with assault rifles, shot Juarez police commissioner Saul Pena as he left police headquarters. This, despite the fact that the army has a large presence in the violent city. Pena was due to be named one of the city’s five police commanders.
"It seems they were waiting for him," said police spokesman Jaime Torres. "They shot him with AK-47s in the back, the stomach and the leg. He died in hospital this morning."
Some 20 city police officers have been murdered by drug gangs in Ciudad Juarez so far this year.
Two days later, in Mexico City, regional commissioner Edgar Millan was returning home when hired hit men cut him down in a hail of bullets. The three gunmen were apparently waiting for the federal police officer. "They were hunting him," a spokesman for the Security Ministry said.
One of the men, caught by Millan’s bodyguard, carried two pistols, one with a silencer, and wore a latex glove. Mexican media announced the attackers were hired by the Sinaloa cartel, headed by Mexico’s most wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman. Millan scuffled with his attackers as they shot him at close range, El Universal newspaper said.
Millan was in charge of coordinating large-scale operations to break up drug rings, and was working closely with the U.S.
These two murders follow by a week, the killing of two other senior policemen in Mexico City.
The murders are a blow to President Felipe Calderon’s war on the country’s drug cartels. He has sent thousands of troops to police the U.S. border and other parts of Mexico in an effort to break the back of organized crime.
The cartel has reportedly put together a team of killers to carry out high-level hits as retaliation against the government for its drug offensive. In January, about 12 Sinaloa cartel gunmen were arrested. Another 13 were arrested in Culiacan, the Sinaloan capital.
Last year, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and over 1,100 people have died this year as the drug gangs fight each other and the security forces.
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