Calderon changes Mexico's drug war strategy

Drug cartels, unrelenting in their attacks, now target soldiers daily Mexican soldiers stand over a detained man after a deadly gun battle with drug traffickers in Apatzingan, Mexico, on May 7.
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Updated: 2 hours, 22 minutes ago

APATZINGAN, Mexico - Mexican drug cartels armed with powerful weapons and angered by a nationwide military crackdown are striking back, killing soldiers in bold, daily attacks that threaten the one force strong enough to take on the gangs.

The daily bloodshed includes an ambush that killed five soldiers this month, a severed head left with a defiant note outside a military barracks on Saturday and the slaying Monday of a top federal intelligence official who was shot in the face in his car outside his office in Mexico City.

Mexicans were particularly shocked last week by televised images of kindergartners fleeing their school during a grenade-and-gun battle between traffickers and soldiers that lasted for nearly two hours in this small town in President Felipe Calderon’s home state of Michoacan.

The unrelenting bloodshed has forced a change in strategy for Calderon, who sent more than 24,000 federal police and soldiers out in December to reoccupy territory from Michoacan’s poppy-dotted mountains to the tourist-packed port of Acapulco.

Now, to supplement the massive presence of soldiers and tanks in small towns, he’s ordered the creation of an elite military special operations force capable of surgical strikes.

“We are not going to give in,â€