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Associated Press
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen staged four attacks on police within a half-hour period, killing four officers in a Mexican border city overrun by drug violence, an official said Monday.
Authorities are investigating whether the attacks Sunday night were coordinated, municipal police spokesman Jaime Torres said.
Dozens of Ciudad Juarez police have been killed this year in attacks blamed on drug gangs trying to consolidate territory. Many officers have quit out of fear for their lives, often after their names have appeared on hit lists left in public.
Another such list naming 26 officers was found early Monday at a dog racing track above the bodies of four civilian men gunned down at the track, Torres said. One of the four had been decapitated, and a Santa Claus hat had been placed on his head. A fifth man who survived was left bound and gagged next to the bodies.
Two officers were killed at a guard house outside the General Hospital. Another policeman was killed and a policewoman was injured when gunmen opened fire on a neighborhood guard station. The fourth officer was shot and killed while sitting inside his patrol vehicle outside a guard station at a park alongside the Rio Grande.
Gunmen in a car also opened fire on a municipal police station across from the Chihuahua state government offices, but nobody was hurt.
Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, has been one of the worst-hit cities in a wave of drug gang violence sweeping Mexico. More than 1,300 people have been killed in the city of 1.3 million this year.
Nationwide, more than 5,300 people have died in gangland style killings in 2008 - more than double the number last year, according to government figures.