Mexican Army takes care of people after police flee city in Chihuahua

CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - A military contingent was ordered Monday to protect Villa Ahumada, a town in northern Mexico where last weekend alleged members of organized crime massacred three civilians, three policemen and seven other uniformed officers that fled without taking news of them.

"The security is in the hands of the army and police ministerial (state) and will be indefinitely until security is restored in the population." the spokesman for the secretariat of public security of the state of Chihuahua, Marco Antonio Moreno, told the Associated Press.

Of the 20 policemen from the village, 10 resigned on Saturday before about 70 men armed with assault rifles entered the village near the U.S. border and killed the police commander Jorge Estrada and two more uniformed officers. The seven remaining fled.

Three civilians also died and eight were abducted, without their whereabouts known until recently.

The mayor of the city of some 1,500 inhabitants -- located more than 1,000 kilometers northwest of the Mexican capital -- Fidel Urrutia remains in Chihuahua City, the state's capital, after the incident.

In statements to local media, Chihuahua state governor José Reyes Baeza blamed the clash of organized crime gangs.

In another development, which occurred Tuesday, eight people died in the northern state of Durango, in a shooting that authorities attributed to a clash between gangs of organized crime operating in the region.

"Our assumption is that they are antagonistic groups that clashed. Now, why were there, is the question," said Ruben Lopez, spokesman for the Attorney General de Justicia del Estado de Durango, in a telephone interview in Spanish.

The incident took place on a road in the municipality of Vicente Guerrero, about 750 kilometers northwest of Mexico City.

In addition to the eight bodies, police found 12 vehicles at the scene and an undetermined quantity of assault rifles and handguns.

Another shooting in the neighboring municipality of Poanas, left two dead, one shot and another, a cyclist, who was rolling when the attackers fled the place.

The Mexican president Felipe Calderón, who came to power in December 2006, deployed more than 24,000 soldiers and federal police in several areas where organized crime groups had won control.

The cartels have reacted with unusual violence, including beheadings of police officers and hired assassins rivals, as well as killings of soldiers.

Authorities have said that in 2007 alone some 2,500 people were killed by facts related to organized crime and drug trafficking.

In response to the wave of violence that hit the country in recent weeks, Calderon said on Monday that does not change his strategy against violence and knows that it "will cost time, resources and, unfortunately, human lives".

Translated from Spanish by The Monitor