CAUGHT IN A SWIRL OF DRUG VIOLENCE, MEXICO VOWS TO FIGHT BACK

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderon and dozens of federal agents
attended the funeral of the chief of the federal police on Friday
morning, a day after his assassination, even as investigators focused
on the possibility that someone inside the police force had tipped off
the killers to his location.

The services for the federal police chief, Commander Edgar Millan
Gomez, and two other agents killed in the line of duty this week
started just a half-hour after four armed men shot and killed a
commander in Mexico City's police force outside his home.

Newspapers here, moreover, were full of reports of battles between
drug gangs in Sinaloa State, including one involving a bazooka. A
sense that violence by organized crime had spun out of control seemed
to hang over the country.

After the service, Mr. Calderon, escorted by heavier security than
usual, traveled to Tamaulipas State on the border with Texas, where
drug dealers have clashed repeatedly with troops and the federal
police, to send the message that his administration would not be
intimidated by Mr. Millan's assassination.

"Today I reiterate my promise not to retreat in the quest for a Mexico
where order prevails," Mr. Calderon said. "We must say, all Mexican
men and women, together, enough is enough."

At least four gunmen ambushed Mr. Millan early Thursday morning as he
entered a courtyard of a building where he had one of his homes, an
apartment where his grandmother and a brother also lived. He was shot
nine times and died later at a hospital. His two bodyguards had
remained on the street.

The entrance to the courtyard was on the street where he grew up. It
is a rough, lower-middle-class neighborhood where many of his peers
went into crime. His parents live across the street and he was well
known among the neighbors.

In an interview in January, Mr. Millan spoke about the ever-present
danger of assassination for federal agents who had taken on the task
of trying to dismantle drug cartels. He was a muscular, soft-spoken
man, with steady eyes, who rarely minced words and had an extensive
knowledge of the drug business. "We run a high risk," he said in the
interview. "But we have a commitment as well. We can win."

For security reasons, Mr. Millan, 41, moved around during the week,
sleeping in different apartments and sometimes at his home in the
northern suburbs of the city, where his wife and teenage daughter
live, officials said.

One major question for investigators is how the gunmen knew where he
would be staying; only a small number of officers, including his
bodyguards, knew his movements.

Violence also flared in other places on Thursday. A gunfight between
rival gangs in the city of Culiacan in Sinaloa State, left three men
dead. That followed another gangland-style attack in the parking
garage of a shopping center in Culiacan, in which several men opened
fire with assault rifles and a bazooka on three men as they got out of
their car. Among the dead, the authorities said, was Arturo Meza
Cazares, whom the United States identified last year, along with his
parents and siblings, as being involved in money laundering for the
Sinaloa cartel.

In the capital on Friday, a city police commander, Esteban Robles
Espinosa, 52, who once headed the department's antikidnapping
division, was shot and killed as he left his house at 7:30 a.m.