6 MEXICO POLICE OFFICERS KILLED IN AMBUSH

Armed Men Surround Their Vehicle in the Marijuana-Rich State of Sinaloa.

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's raging drug war claimed the lives of six more
police officers, ambushed on patrol in the marijuana-rich state of
Sinaloa, authorities said Friday.

The attack followed the slaying Thursday of a senior police
commander, part of a long string of killings apparently aimed at
eroding public confidence in the government's ability to challenge drug gangs.

The six officers were killed when two carloads of heavily armed men
cut off their vehicle in the Sinaloa capital of Culiacan, an official
with the state attorney general's office said by e-mail.

More than 4,400 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico,
among them hundreds of police officers, since President Felipe
Calderon launched an all-out offensive against drug cartels after
taking office in December 2006.

Calderon says the surge in killings and gun battles is a sign of his
government's success in cracking down on drug-trafficking networks.

But several analysts suggest that the high-profile killings in
particular make the government and its main law enforcement agencies
appear vulnerable.

The assassinations, along with the gangs' growing propensity for
decapitating their victims and issuing threats using posters and the
Internet, "have a clear objective to intimidate, frighten, paralyze
society and, with that, force the federal government to retreat,"
Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino said Friday.

Inspector Igor Labastida, a senior officer in the federal police, was
the fifth top commander slain in 13 months. A man armed with an Uzi
killed him and one of his bodyguards as they ate lunch Thursday at a
small, busy restaurant in Mexico City. The gunman fled in a waiting
car while a second man videotaped the bodies and calmly walked away,
witnesses told the Mexican daily El Universal.

Two bodyguards were wounded in the attack.

Labastida had survived an earlier assassination attempt, and his name
figured on a hit list purportedly drawn up and circulated by drug
gangs. Another senior commander on the list, Edgar Millan Gomez, was
killed in May.

The Mexican government on Friday applauded U.S. Senate approval of a
$400-million aid package for Mexico's drug war that will provide the
Calderon government with training, telecommunications, aircraft and
other equipment.

Mexico earlier objected to portions of the bill, known as the Merida
Initiative, that would have required it to change the way human
rights violations are investigated. Congressional officials agreed to
ease those conditions.

Mourino, the interior minister, praised the measure because it
represented "a concrete expression of the principle of shared
responsibility" in the drug war.

Mexico has long complained that it endures the ravages of the war
while the U.S. has done little to stop the flow of guns southward
into the hands of the cartels. Mourino said he believed that was
changing and that U.S. authorities had begun to track and stop
weapons more efficiently.

"Are we totally satisfied with what is being done? Not yet," he said
at a Friday morning news conference. "But we are satisfied at having
made the U.S. government aware of the level of the problem, what it
represents for our country and the need to take steps on the U.S. side."