MEXICO CITY – The Mexican government updated its drug war death toll on Wednesday, reporting that 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon began a military assault on criminal cartels in late 2006.
The new official tally, provided by the attorney general’s office, included data only through September, and it showed that drug-related murders increased 11 per cent, to 12,903, compared with the same nine-month period in 2010.
Still, a government statement sought to find a silver lining, asserting that it was the first year since 2006 “that the homicide rate increase has been lower compared to the previous years”.
But that will hardly calm a public scared by the recent arrival of grisly violence in once-safe cities such as Guadalajara. – (New York Times)