Amid growing alarm over drug violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the Mexican government will deploy as many as 5,000 more troops to the border city, officials said Thursday.
The increase would triple the number of troops and federal police officers operating there as part of President Felipe Calderon’s offensive against drug traffickers.
Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said the added troops would give the military a higher profile by taking control of police functions, including street patrols. Currently, soldiers tend highway checkpoints, guard crime scenes and take part in special operations, such as house searches.
Mexico has made headway in its struggle against the country’s powerful drug cartels, but the crackdown has led to more violence as criminal gangs battle for diminishing profits, the United States said on Friday.
The State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report also said Afghanistan slashed opium poppy cultivation by 19 percent in 2008 after two years of record highs.
But drug trafficking and poppy cultivation continued to fuel insurgencies in Afghanistan’s less secure southern areas, it said.
The U.S. Justice Department has announced the arrests of 755 people on drug charges in a crackdown on the Mexico-based Sinaloa Cartel that began in 2007.
The department says the suspects were detained in a 21-month multi-agency investigation called “Operation Xcellerator.”
Forty eight of the arrests were made Wednesday in the U.S. states of California, Minnesota and Maryland.
The Justice Department says the operation led to the seizure of more than $59 million and more than 20 tons of drugs, including about 12,500 kilograms of cocaine and 7,000 kilograms of marijuana.
