Mexico's president says "enough" to drug hitmen


Mexico's President Felipe Calderon (4th L) and members of Mexican Federal Police stand guard next to the caskets of three officers recently killed during a ceremony to honor them in Mexico City May 9, 2008. REUTERS/Ana de La Serna/Presidency Press

Reuters - 1 hour 8 minutes ago
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon said on Friday the country was sick and tired of rampant drug violence after five high-ranking policemen were killed in less than a week.

"We have to come together to confront this evil, we Mexicans have to definitively and categorically say, 'That's enough!'," Calderon said. "We can't accept this situation, we have to take back our streets."

He spoke after attending the funeral of regional commissioner Edgar Millan, one of Mexico's top federal policemen, who was murdered on Thursday by hired killers waiting for him at his home.

Calderon has deployed tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police around the country to bring powerful drug cartels under control, but the army has failed to reduce spiralling violence.

More than 2,500 people were killed in drug related violence in Mexico last year. Another 1,100 people have died so far this year as the drug gangs battle each other and security forces.

The Mexican media said Millan was targeted by professional killers hired by the powerful Sinaloa gang because of his leading role in the arrests of the cartel's gunmen.

"I know that organized criminals are reacting like this because they see that we hurting their operations and breaking down their structures," Calderon said on Friday.

Hours before Millan's funeral, Esteban Robles, a senior detective in Mexico City, was gunned down in front of his apartment, shot seven times in the head, neck and chest.

Two other senior policemen were shot in the capital in recent days and drug hitmen killed Saul Pena, a top police officer in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Editing by Kieran Murray)

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