Mexico, Drug War | featured news

Two decapitated bodies were found at the entrance to one of Mexico's most luxurious shopping malls on Wednesday and prosecutors announced that more than 47,000 people have been killed in drug violence in the five years since President Felipe Calderon launched a military crackdown against drug cartels.

The number of homicides in Mexico rose by nearly a quarter in 2010 as the drug war intensified across the country.

Top Mexican drug lord Ezequiel "Tony Tormenta" Cardenas died in a shootout with security forces on Friday in the border city of Matamoros across from Brownsville, Texas, Mexico's navy said.

The biggest newspaper in Mexico s most violent city will restrict drug war coverage after the killing of its second journalist in less than two years, just as international press representatives will urge the government to make security for journalists a national priority.

U.S. Border Patrol agents fired gunshots into Mexico over the weekend after being attacked during a marijuana seizure in Mission, Texas, the agency told CNN on Monday.

Federal police on Monday captured a long-sought, alleged Texas-born gang kingpin who faces drug trafficking charges in the U.S. and has been blamed for a vicious turf war that has included bodies hung from bridges and shootouts in central Mexico.

About 3,200 Mexican federal police have been fired for failing to do their work or being linked to corruption, an official says.

A major Mexican television network says a car has exploded in front of its offices in a northern state where officials are investigating the massacre of 72 Central and South American migrants.

Four decapitated and mutilated corpses were strung from a bridge in a popular getaway outside the Mexican capital on Sunday, the latest atrocity as the country battles an escalating drug war.

Guards and officials at a prison in northern Mexico allegedly let inmates out, lent them guns and sent them off in official vehicles to carry out drug-related killings, including the massacre of 17 people last week, prosecutors said Sunday.