GANGS KILL MEXICAN COPS TO FORCE OUSTER OF CHIEF

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - Gunmen killed a police officer and a jail guard
Friday and left signs on their bodies saying they had fulfilled a promise
to slay at least one officer every 48 hours until the Ciudad Juarez police
chief resigns.

The slayings were a chilling sign that criminal gangs are determined to
control the police force of the biggest Mexican border city, with a
population of 1.3 million people across from El Paso, Texas.

Ciudad Juarez police have long come under attack, and many officers have
quit out of fear for their lives, some after their names appeared on hit
lists left in public throughout the city.

Police officer Cesar Ivan Portillo was the fifth officer killed this week
in Mexico's deadliest city.

Police already were on "red alert" - meaning they could not patrol alone -
after cardboard signs with handwritten messages appeared taped to the doors
and windows of businesses Wednesday, warning that one officer would be
killed every 48 hours if Public Safety Secretary Roberto Orduna does not quit.

Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz insisted Friday that he would not back down.

"We will not allow the control of the police force to fall in the hands of
criminal gangs," he said.

More than 6,000 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico over
the past year as gangs battle each other for territory and to fight off a
nationwide crackdown by the army. Nearly a third of the slayings have taken
place in Ciudad Juarez, and more than 50 of those dead are city police
officers.

Violence also has spilled across the border into the U.S., where
authorities report a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions
connected to Mexico's murderous cartels.

Homeland Security officials have said they will bring in the military if
the violence continues to grow and threatens the U.S. border region.

"The violence is spreading like wildfire across the Rio Grande," said
George Greyson, a Mexico expert at the College of William & Mary in
Virginia. "It's a major national security problem for us that is much more
important than Iraq and Afghanistan."

Also Friday, the U.S. State Department renewed a travel advisory warning
Americans about the increased violence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Some Mexicans have questioned whether President Feline Caldron's two-year,
nationwide crackdown on drug gangs was worth all the killings.

But Caldron and his administration have defended the fight, with Economy
Secretary Gerard Ruin Mattes saying on Wednesday that if Mexico gave up its
fight against the cartels, "the next president of the republic would be a
drug dealer."

Portillo and city jail guard Juan Palo Ruin were killed as they left their
homes before dawn to head to work, city spokesman Jaime Toreros said.

Three days earlier, assailants fatally shot police operations director
Sacramento Peruse, the chief's right-hand man, and three other officers who
were sitting with him in a patrol car near the U.S. consulate.

The bodies of Peruse and one of the officers were sent to their home states
Thursday to be buried, and the city planned to hold a ceremony Friday for
the two others from Ciudad Juarez.