DRUG GANG KILLINGS IN MEXICO NEARLY 5,400 IN 2008

MEXICO CITY - The number of people killed in Mexico by drug violence
has more than doubled this year to nearly 5,400 people and 2009 could
be even worse, Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said on Monday.

The official death toll of 5,376 for the year so far is higher than
media estimates and more than twice the 2,477 people killed in the
whole of 2007. Most victims were rival drug gang members or police.

Medina Mora said the surge in killings by drug gangs, who use gruesome
tactics like beheading their victims and dumping bodies in public,
would likely worsen next year as cartels fight each other and security
forces over smuggling turf.

"We have not reached the peak of the curve yet," he told reporters at
a briefing. "I still see an increase."

President Felipe Calderon launched an all-out war on drug gangs when
he took power at the end of 2006, vowing to end decades of cartel
violence with an army-led campaign, but two years on, cartel violence
has spiraled out of control.

Medina Mora said drug gang killings so far this year were up 117
percent from the same period in 2007.

Most of the bloodshed takes place in the northern states of Baja
California, Sinaloa and Chihuahua, where powerful cartels headed by
Mexico's most-wanted man Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman and rival Vicente
Carrillo Fuentes fight over smuggling routes into the United States.