218 dead this year in Mexico border

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico, (AFP)

At least 218 people have died so far this year in suspected drug attacks in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, including four more deaths reported Friday, authorities said.

Drug-related deaths escalated countrywide to more than 5,300 in 2008 amid a government crackdown on cartels fighting for control of key trafficking routes in the United States. Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, has been worst hit, with more than 1,600 deaths reported in 2008 in the city of some 1.5 million.

Police found two male bodies in a working class district of the city on Friday and the prosecutor's office reported finding the bodies of two young men in another poor neighborhood.

Suspected drug traffickers also shot dead two men near the state capital Chihuahua, local justice officials said, and another was shot dead in the town of Baborigame, also in Chihuahua state.