SOLDIERS killed a top leader of the Sinaloa cartel in a raid on his posh hideout, dealing the biggest blow yet to Mexico’s most powerful drug gang since President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against organised crime in 2006.

One of the top three leaders of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel died in a gunfight with soldiers, ending the long run of a mysterious capo considered a founder of the country’s massive methamphetamine trade.

Federal troops stormed a seaside holiday home and captured one of the country’s most brutal drug lords, the second time in less than a month that Mexico took one of its most powerful traffickers off the streets.

MEXICO opened the new year with what could be its most dubious distinction yet in the three-year-old battle against drug trafficking – 69 murders in one day.

Gunmen sprayed bullets at a restaurant where the mayor of a Texas border town was eating with a Mexican state attorney general and other officials, killing a woman leaving the building.