RAW STORY– Mexico’s bloody drug wars saw a new spasm of killings late Saturday into Sunday, with 25 people fatally shot in the northern state of Chihuahua bordering the United States. Seven of the deaths occurred in violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico’s murder capital, bringing to 62 the number of people killed in the city over the past week.

The 18 other slayings overnight included four people fatally shot by automatic weapons fire in a bar in the town of Camargo, near the state capital Chihuahua City, and two women whose bodies were found stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car in the same town, prosecutors said.

So far this year, more than 850 people have been killed in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million, while more than 2,660 were killed there in 2009, according to official figures.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon visited Ciudad Juarez in February and apologized to numerous grieving families who lost loved ones in a January massacre that claimed the lives of 15 children and teens. The president admitted that his three-year crackdown on crime with more than 50,000 troops spread across the country “is not enough,” and vowed to redesign a new strategy against crime and violence with community cooperation.

To the east in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey early Sunday, three men and two women were trampled to death when some 10,000 people at an outdoor concert stampeded after three shots were fired, presumably in the air, by somebody at the fairground, local officials said.

Another 30 people were treated for injuries from the jostling, they added. Moments before the gunshots, the crowd appears to have been primed for panic when shouts “hit the ground” and “gunfight” were heard, witnesses told the Mexican newspaper Reforma. Monterrey, in Nuevo Laredo state that also borders the United States, has seen a spike in gang violence pitting the Guf of Mexico and Los Zetas drug cartels, officials said.

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© RAW STORY, 2010