MEXICO'S DRUG WAR DEATH TOLL TOPS 2,000

Mexico City -- The death toll in Mexico's drug war has surpassed
2,000 this year, with a newspaper editor found dead in the resort
city of Zihuatanejo and a police commander assassinated in Tijuana
apparently among the latest victims, according to news reports.

Another police commander was killed Monday in the northern city of
Monterrey, and four people were reported killed in the southern state
of Guerrero.

No government agency keeps a running tally of the drug-related
killings, but according to human rights organizations and newspapers,
an average of six people are killed in the country's drug wars every day.

The newspaper El Universal said Saturday that its tally of
drug-related killings for the year had reached 2,012. Last year, more
than 1,500 people were killed in violence related to a lucrative
trade in illicit drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamine.

The death Friday of Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of the daily
newspaper El Despertar de la Costa, appeared to be the sixth killing
of a Mexican journalist this year, according to the group Reporters
Without Borders.

Tamayo died before dawn in a Zihuatanejo hotel room, officials said.
The editor was found with three puncture wounds on his shoulder, said
his sister Ruth Tamayo. According to local officials, the coroner
established the cause of death as "heart attack" but could not rule
out foul play until a toxicology report was complete.

Days before he was found dead, the editor had written a column
denouncing local corruption. The southern state of Guerrero, which
includes Zihuatanejo and Acapulco, has been ravaged by a battle
between competing drug cartels and the police. Tamayo's newspaper
reported extensively on the violence.

"Are we becoming used to this being a 'normal' day in our country?"
El Universal asked in a Saturday editorial, as the paper reported on
the deaths of Tamayo and a wild shootout in the southern state of
Michoacan that left a suspected cartel "soldier" dead.