Mexico sends troops to fight Sinaloa drug cartel

CULIACAN, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico dispatched thousands of troops on Tuesday to the state of Sinaloa, the heartland of a powerful drug cartel run by the country's most wanted man, following a wave of police murders.

Helicopters hovered over state capital Culiacan and newly arrived soldiers patrolled with federal police as President Felipe Calderon's top security officials met in the steamy city.

Sinaloa is home to a federation of drug gangs run by Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who escaped from prison in a laundry van in 2001 and has declared war on rival cartels for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.

"The last few weeks have been very violent in Sinaloa, with deaths and executions, with a bigger show of arms, brutality and firepower," Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora told a news conference after the security meeting.

Interior Minister Juan Camilo Mourino said 2,723 troops, federal police and investigative police would arrive in Sinaloa over the coming days.

Around 100 infantry troops armed with automatic weapons boarded a Hercules transport plane at an airport in the eastern state of Puebla to head for Sinaloa, Reuters witnesses said.

The military deployment follows the murders last week of six senior police officers across Mexico, including Edgar Millan, one of Mexico's top federal policemen.

Police say Millan was killed by a hitman in the pay of the Sinaloa cartel because of his leading role in the arrest this year of dozens of the gang's gunmen.

Over 1,100 people have died this year as drug gangs fight each other and the security forces.

Calderon, a conservative who has sent 25,000 troops and federal police to fight drug cartels across Mexico since late 2006, pledged last week to take back Mexican streets from drug peddlers and gunmen.

(Addition reporting by Anahi Rama and Mica Rosenberg, editing by Todd Eastham)