Mexican officials said they plan to beef up security at several tourist cities across the country in a bid to tackle rising drug-related crime.
More than 5,000 federal security officers are being deployed to areas including Ciudad Juarez, Cancun, Los Cabos, Manzanillo and Colima, Renato Sales, Mexico’s national security commissioner said.
The move was sparked by a recent lengthy shootout in the Baja California resort city of La Paz.
Baja California Sur now has the second highest homicide rate in the country.
Authorities said 25 people were murdered in Mexico over the weekend, which included three people in a bar in Cancun while a Chilean tourist was killed in Acapulco.
Salas says the goal is to ‘recover peace and calm for all Mexicans,’ although gave few more details about the security deployment.
Earlier this month the US State Department upgraded travel advisories to the most severe level for several Mexican states including Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Guerrero.
In 2017 more than 25,000 murders were recorded across the country.
In a separate effort to curb organized crime and cut off drug supply routes into the US, officials from Mexico and the US are apparently discussing moves to deploy armed US air marshals on cross border flights for the first time, Reuters reports.
It would mark a shift in policy as allowing armed foreign nationals on Mexican soil is a politically sensitive issue.
US and Mexican officials agreed to ‘study the convenience of negotiating an agreement for the deployment of federal air marshals on commercial flights,’ Reuters reported.
In addition they plan to cooperate in other ways to ‘identify specific transnational criminal organizations, map their business models in both countries and design a joint operational strategy to combat them.’
