Mexico sends troops into Tijuana as part of drug trafficking crackdown

MEXICO is sending 3,300 soldiers and federal police to fight drug gangs in the border city of Tijuana, which has become a major smuggling route for cocaine and methamphetamine entering the United States.

The offensive expands a crackdown on organised crime by President Felipe Calderon, who sent 7,000 troops to his home state of Michoacan immediately after taking office on December 1.

“We will carry out all the necessary actions to retake every region of national territory,” Mexican Interior Secretary Francisco Ramirez Acuna said. “We will not allow any state to be a hostage of drug traffickers or organised crime.”

The Tijuana force consists of 2,620 soldiers, 162 marines and 510 federal police, and will be backed by 28 boats, 21 planes and nine helicopters, Ramirez Acuna said.

The force will hunt down suspected traffickers, patrol the coast and man checkpoints in a city that lies across the border from San Diego and is one of the world’s busiest border crossings. It is a trans-shipment point for cocaine heading north from Colombia, as well as locally produced methamphetamine and marijuana.

Tijuana has been plagued by fighting between rival drug gangs. Last year, there were more than 300 killings in the city. In one of the most gruesome crimes, assailants in June abducted three policemen and a civilian, killing them and dumping their severed heads on a Tijuana beach.