Michoacán, Mexico
Death toll reaches new high: At least 96 people were killed in drug violence on a single day this week, the bloodiest day yet in the all-out war on drug cartels launched in 2006. In the state of Michoacán, gunmen ambushed a convoy of federal police, killing 12 officers. In the city of Mazatlan, 29 inmates were shot and stabbed to death in a fight between drug gangs. Other gun battles claimed lives across the country. The soaring violence came on the very day President Felipe Calderón published an op-ed in major Mexican newspapers defending his deployment of army troops to areas where cartels hold sway. “If we remain with our arms crossed,” he wrote, “we will remain in the grip of organized crime, we will always live in fear, our children will have no future, there will be more violence, and we will lose our freedom.”
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