More than 2,500 Mexican agents sent to fight drug trafficking

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The Mexican government has sent more than 2,500 soldiers and federal police to crack down on soaring violence in a border state across from Texas and New Mexico.

Agents began arriving the previous day in Ciudad Juarez, near El Paso, Texas, the government said Thursday. About 200 people have been killed in this Mexican border city of 1.3 million since Jan. 1.

"In this battle, no group will be able to withstand the government's will and force," Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino said at the initiative's unveiling in Ciudad Juarez.

Chihuahua state is also home to the town of Palomas, across from Columbus, New Mexico, where at least 40 people have been killed so far this year. Earlier this week, Palomas' police chief sought asylum in the U.S. after his deputies abandoned him and he received death threats.

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora blamed the violence on the cartels' reaction to a government crackdown, under which President Felipe Calderon has already deployed more than 20,000 federal agents nationwide to combat a wave of killings, beheadings and grenade attacks.

"The violence ... is a sign of (the gangs') weakness, decay and decline," Medina Mora said.

The soldiers and federal agents will patrol throughout Chihuahua and evaluate local police in an effort to weed out corrupt officers, authorities said.

Speaking in the central state of Morelos on Thursday, Calderon touted the recent arrest of two alleged top cartel leaders as evidence of his government's resolve to fight the gangs.