Mexico Deploys Troops to Outskirts of Mexico City
Baku, September 21 (AZERTAC). Mexico has sent soldiers to patrol a suburb of Mexico City for the first time to combat a rise in drug-related violence that is beginning to encroach on the capital.
From late Wednesday, a combined force of around 1,000 soldiers, federal police and local police took to the streets of Nezahualcoyotl on Mexico City's eastern flank, which has suffered from a dispute between two rival drug cartels.
President Felipe Calderon's fight against drug gangs has overshadowed his administration, and the deployment in Nezahualcoyotl brings the conflict into the home state of his successor Enrique Pena Nieto, who takes office in December.
The local government's request for troops in the sprawling municipality in the State of Mexico follows the murder there this weekend of Jaime Serrano, a local state congressman and member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Some Nezahualcoyotl residents told Reuters they had been extorted by criminals identifying themselves as members of the La Familia drug gang.
Mexico City and its immediate surroundings have been among the areas least affected by the bloody turf wars between drug gangs and their clashes with security forces, which have killed around 60,000 people over the past six years.
The national death toll from the drug violence has eased somewhat in 2012, according to a tally by newspaper Reforma.
Reforma data showed deaths related to the drug war had reached 550 in the two regions by mid-September, putting the toll on course for a jump of around 15 percent from last year.
Kidnappings in Mexico City and the State of Mexico were also up in the first eight months of 2012, police figures show.
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