200 Mexican federal police reinforcements flew into Sinaloa Tuesday as authorities struggled to control the narcotics-related violence

200 Mexican federal police reinforcements flew into Sinaloa Tuesday as authorities struggled to control the narcotics-related violence roiling the Pacific Coast state.
The police, sent to beef up a force of 3,000, were dispatched amid escalating bloodshed that includes two massacres in recent days that killed a 12-year-old girl, at least four teenagers and several other apparent innocents.
There had been reports that the victims of the most recent massacre were caught in a cross fire between rival gangsters as they rode in four cars on Guamuchil's main street about 1 a.m. Sunday.But Martin Robles, a senior police investigator, said his agents believed that the victims were intentionally targeted. He said the agents were uncertain whether the attackers were gunning for one or more of the people in the cars or were simply trying to terrorize the local population. Police recovered more than 300 spent shells from the scene.
"There's no evidence that would make us presume there was some sort of clash between rival criminal bands," Robles told a local newspaper in an interview later distributed by his office. "The evidence indicates the shots were directed at the vehicles."The Sunday attack came just days after gunmen killed 2 state policemen and nine civilians in apparently related attacks in the center of the state capital, Culiacan, about 60 miles south of Guamuchil. Police have arrested eight suspected gangsters in the Culiacan attacks, which took place shortly before noon Thursday.
Angry civic leaders were trying to organize citizen protests against the violence. But such efforts in the past have had little success in building a civic movement for security, activists say.
Sinaloa, considered one of Mexico's prime drug-production and -smuggling corridors, has been submerged in bloodshed this year.The new reinforcements will join the nearly 3,000 other federal police and army troops that have been patrolling Culiacan and nearby cities and towns since mid-May.
The federal presence is part of President Felipe Calderon's deployment of nearly 30,000 police and soldiers in nine states across western Mexico and along the U.S. border aimed at controlling drug gangs.
The 19-month-old campaign has resulted in the seizure of 57 tons of cocaine and 2,900 tons of marijuana, according to the government. But it has failed to stop the violence between gangs, which this year has claimed more than 2,000 lives, a quarter of them in Sinaloa.