Mexican drug gangs step up police murder war

By Ignacio Alvarado

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Suspected drug gunmen ambushed and killed a Mexican police chief on Saturday in a murder campaign against senior policemen that has escalated in the past week.

Juan Antonio Roman, the No. 2 policeman in the gritty border city of Ciudad Juarez, was riddled with bullets outside his home as he stepped from his pickup truck in the early hours of the morning, a police spokesman said.

He was the sixth senior policeman killed throughout the country this week in a blow to President Felipe Calderon's fight against well-armed cartels that smuggle cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines to the United States.

"He came home for a reunion with family and friends and arrived in his official vehicle, but the hired assassins were waiting for him," police spokesman Jaime Torres said.

Local media said the gunmen fired some 50 bullets at Roman.

Roman's name had been on top of a death list that drug traffickers left at a Ciudad Juarez police monument in January.

Hired gunmen believed to be in the pay of the Sinaloa cartel killed Edgar Millan, one of the country's top federal policemen, at his home on Thursday.

Some 1,100 people have died so far this year as the drug gangs battle each other and security forces. Calderon has deployed 25,000 troops and federal police to fight the gangs.