U.S. expands Mexico travel warning over violence

A street in the Texas border city of Brownsville named after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jaime Zapata, who was killed by suspected drug gang members, is seen in this undated handout photo released on April 8, 2011.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Spreading drug violence in Mexico has led the U.S. State Department to increase the number of places it says Americans should avoid for safety reasons.

A travel advisory issued over the Easter weekend urged U.S. citizens to avoid all but essential travel to 10 states in northern and central Mexico due to "ongoing violence and persistent security concerns."

Last September, it had issued a warning about six states.

The latest advisory cited concerns about parts of Sonora, south of Arizona, and Mexico's central Jalisco, San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas states, where drug cartel violence has spiked in recent months.

The State Department also maintained its September warning against non-essential travel to northern Tamaulipas and central Michoacan, parts of northwestern Durango and Sinaloa and the border states of Coahuila and Chihuahua, south of Texas.

"Bystanders, including U.S. citizens, have been injured or killed in violent incidents in various parts of the country, especially, but not exclusively in the northern border region, demonstrating the heightened risk of violence throughout Mexico," the travel advisory said.

More than 37,000 people have been killed in Mexico since late 2006 when President Felipe Calderon took office and sent the Mexican armed forces to crush powerful cartels battling for lucrative smuggling routes to the United States.

The State Department advisory noted that 111 Americans were reported murdered in Mexico last year, up from 35 in 2007.

Authorities earlier this month retrieved 177 corpses from a mass grave in San Fernando, Tamaulipas. Mexico's Attorney General blamed the Zetas drug cartel for the killings.

In another high profile incident, a U.S. federal agent was shot dead and a second wounded on a highway in San Luis Potosi in February. That attack was also blamed on the Zetas. (Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Laura MacInnis and Jerry Norton)