MEXICO DRUG-RELATED KILLINGS BECOMING A WAY OF LIFE IN '06

Death Toll Tops 2,000, Report Says

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 methamphetamines.

The death Friday of Misael Tamayo Hernandez, the 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.

But in a country where drug killings are often public events -- a hail
of bullets on a busy street, a decapitated head deposited on the steps
of a government building -- Hernandez's death was different.

Hernandez died before dawn in a Zihuatanejo hotel room, officials
said. His sister Ruth Tamayo, who identified his body at the
Zihuatanejo morgue, said he was neither shot, nor strangled with a
towel, or tied up and executed, as reported by various local media.

The editor was found with three puncture wounds on his shoulder,
Tamayo said. 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. Hernandez's newspaper
reported extensively on the violence.

Three days before Hernandez's death, Mexican President-elect Felipe
Calderon visited Zihuatanejo to deliver a speech to a foreign trade
conference. He dedicated a part of his speech to addressing fears that
the wave of drug-related violence sweeping his country might chase
away foreign investment.

Calderon, set to take the oath of office Dec. 1, promised his
government would not waver in its battle against drug violence.

"It's going to take work, time and money" to win the battle,
Calderon said. "And it will probably cost us human lives as well. . .
But there is no other alternative."

In April, hit men deposited two severed heads outside a Guerrero state
government building in Acapulco. "So that you learn to respect,"
read a message scrawled on a red sheet left nearby. In October, two
severed heads were discovered on Acapulco's beach.

In Tijuana on Thursday, more than 10 heavily armed men ambushed a
police vehicle on a busy thoroughfare near downtown, killing one
police officer in a shootout that left a flower vendor and a taxi
driver injured.

A police commander, Hector Gaxiola Gamez, narrowly escaped the attack.
But the next morning, gunmen again caught up to the commander, and
this time they did not miss. Gaxiola's body -- handcuffed to that of
his brother -- was found in an empty lot, his body disfigured by more
than 100 gunshot wounds.

Gaxiola Gamez was the 19th law enforcement officer to be killed this
year in Tijuana. Many were killed after the August capture of alleged
drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, which many experts believe
has triggered a battle for control of the lucrative narcotics trade in the
city.