- Jo Tuckman in Mexico City and Ed Vulliamy
- The Guardian, Wednesday 24 March 2010
Saturday: a shoot-out between rival cartels in the north-western state of Sinaloa leaves nine dead, including six peasant farmers caught in the crossfire.
Sunday: gunmen burst into a wedding in a small rural town in the southern state of Guerrero, killing five.
Monday: hitmen target two people driving in Ciudad Juárez. The scene recalls the murder of three people linked to the US consulate 10 days earlier.
Tuesday: newspapers publish a photograph of an alleged drug dealer being arrested by marines next to pictures of a body dressed in the same clothes, which was found dumped on Monday.
Those are just a small selection of incidents from the last five days of Mexico’s raging drug wars, which have left few parts of the country untouched over the last three years. A snap visit today by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, defence secretary Robert Gates, and homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, is a sign of how concerned the US is getting about the growing violence just over its southern border.
