MEXICO CITY, (Reuters) – Mexico sent 1,000 federal police and cargo planes loaded with armored cars yesterday to Michoacan to help quell a flare-up in drug gang violence that is challenging President Felipe Calderon in his home state.
They join an anti-drug force of several hundred troops and federal police in the western marijuana-producing state, where heavily armed traffickers have unleashed a wave of attacks on security forces in recent days.
One attack on the weekend, apparently in revenge for the arrest of a high-level trafficker, left the stripped, blood-smeared bodies of 12 federal police in a heap by a remote highway — the latest victims of drug gang violence that has killed some 12,800 people across Mexico since late 2006.
