Toll of drug war rises in Mexico

MEXICO CITY —  The newly appointed head of a drug intelligence unit in the attorney general’s office was shot and killed Monday in a street ambush here that dealt a new blow to President Felipe Calderon’s campaign against this nation’s drug traffickers.

Officials said several assailants waited for Jose Nemesio Lugo Felix, director of the attorney general’s “Information Against Delinquency” unit, trapping his SUV on a narrow street. Such assassinations have become common in many border and port cities of Mexico but are rare in the nation’s capital.

Lugo Felix had been appointed in April to head the unit specializing in the analysis of data about the activities of Mexico’s drug cartels, officials said. He was shot as he drove his vehicle during rush hour just outside an office of the attorney general in the southern Coyoacan district, a center of the city’s arts community.

The method of the assault “leads us to presume it was a planned execution,” Victor Corzo, an official with the attorney general’s office, told reporters. “It could be related to drug traffickers because he was someone who possessed information.” The slain official was a veteran anti-crime “strategist,” Corzo added.

The killing came as apparent drug-related violence continued unabated across the country.

Over the weekend, two journalists for the Azteca television network were reported missing and assumed kidnapped in the northern city of Monterrey. An army captain was kidnapped and slain in Chilpancingo, the capital of Guerrero state, on the Pacific Coast. Both regions have seen increasing violence as drug cartels fight one another for lucrative trade routes to the United States, while also battling the police and the army.

A report by the attorney general’s office published Monday in the Mexico City newspaper Milenio said the drug war has intensified because the nation’s two most powerful trafficking organizations are fighting over territory in six states: Guerrero, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco and Quintana Roo.

The rival traffickers are seeking to control rural areas where opium poppies and marijuana are grown, as well as key maritime shipping routes for Colombian cocaine that passes through Mexico on its way to the United States, the report said.

Lugo Felix had previously run a unit in the attorney general’s office that investigated child and immigrant smuggling, authorities said.

His attackers used a red Pontiac to block his path, officials said. Gunmen emerged from the car and opened fire, striking him three times in the head. The assailants fled, abandoning the car, which turned out to be stolen, officials said.

In Monterrey, reporter Gamaliel Lopez Candanosa and cameraman Gerardo Paredes Perez have not been seen since Thursday, Azteca television said in a press release Sunday.

The two men were last seen after covering a Mother’s Day event Thursday, the television network said. Dozens of police officers and government officials have been killed in the Monterrey area in the last year.

Lopez Candanosa was a general assignment reporter who only occasionally covered the region’s drug wars, officials said. He reported in July on the discovery of a severed head and a threatening “narco message” in the city.

Mexico City newspaper El Universal said more than 1,000 people have been killed by organized crime groups this year. The newspaper Reforma counted 758 killed as of May 1. The Mexican government does not release an official tally.

Also Monday, a federal police investigator was found shot to death in Tijuana. Last week, a severed head was deposited at an army base in Veracruz, a day after Calderon’s government announced it would send troops to the Gulf Coast state to combat the drug trade.

“We’ll keep on going when the federal forces get here,” read a note left with the head. It was signed “Z-40,” a reference to the Zetas, a band of enforcers working in behalf of the Gulf cartel.

On Thursday, four government bodyguards assigned to protect the children of the governor of Mexico state, Enrique Pena Nieto, were slain in Veracruz while escorting their charges on a beach vacation.

Veracruz Gov. Fidel Herrera said the act was similar to those that have become common in states where drug cartels are battling to control lucrative trafficking routes.

“Just like in Sonora, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Michoacan and Guerrero, we are facing a national struggle,” Herrera told reporters last week. The first federal forces arrived in the state Saturday.

Veracruz is a new front in the nation’s drug wars. According to published reports, drug traffickers based in the northern Gulf Coast state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, are fighting rivals based farther west in the border state of Sinaloa. Each wants control of smuggling routes along the Gulf of Mexico. There are also reports that the Tamaulipas traffickers -- the Gulf cartel -- may be splitting into two rival groups.

Calderon has made the war on drugs the centerpiece of his presidency. Last week, he created the Corps of Federal Support Forces, an army unit specializing in anti-drug efforts. The unit will answer directly to his office.

Calderon sent army troops to Michoacan and Guerrero not long after taking office in December. The army is seen by many here as one of the few security institutions still relatively immune to infiltration by drug traffickers.

At least 11 army troops have been killed this year. Five soldiers were killed in an ambush in the town of Caracuaro, Michoacan, this month.

“The sacrifice of these patriots will not be in vain,” Calderon said at an event marking Cinco de Mayo. “In honor of their memory, their deaths will not go unpunished and we will redouble our offensive against the enemy.”

The latest victim, Lugo Felix, had been on the job just a few weeks, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office said.

“To be honest, I think he was still getting his boxes unpacked,” the spokeswoman said.

hector.tobar@latimes.com

Carlos Martinez of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.