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Another policeman killed in violent Mexican state

Posted on: Saturday, 22 April 2006, 21:38 CDT

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Gunmen killed a police chief in southern Mexico when they sprayed his car with dozens of bullets on Saturday, officials said, the latest bloodshed to be reported in the increasingly violent state of Guerrero.

Fidel Arellano, police chief for the city of Ciudad Altamirano, was shot in his patrol car in the early hours of the morning. Another police officer with him was wounded.

"They fired a hail of bullets from two cars, there must have been more than 30 hits," a spokesman for the local government in Guerrero told Reuters.

The shooting happened two days after suspected drug gang hit men decapitated two policemen and placed their heads outside government offices in nearby Acapulco in a gruesome reprisal for a crackdown on crime.

In both cases, the federal government is investigating links to drug criminals, Attorney General Daniel Cabeza de Vaca told reporters on Saturday.

Acapulco and Guerrero state are in the middle of a bloody turf war between two cartels fighting for control of the lucrative local drug trade.

More than a dozen people have been gunned down in attacks attributed to organized crime in Acapulco this year. Earlier this month, a grenade attack wounded five people.

The latest killings came after Guerrero state Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca this week gave Acapulco police 32 million pesos ($2.9 million) to buy guns, vehicles and uniforms as part of a statewide crime-fighting package.

Source: REUTERS

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