Mexico drug violence leaves at least eight dead in Mexico

MEXICO CITY: Nine people were killed in several separate episodes of drug-related violence in Mexico, including two Mexican soldiers who had been kidnapped and a woman who led a rural police unit, authorities said Monday.

The bodies of the two soldiers, aged 37 and 32, were found wrapped in blankets and with their mouths duct-taped shut in Gomez Palacios city, said Alejandro Moreno, with the Durango state Prosecutors Office. They had been kidnapped on Friday, he added.

The rural police commander, Guadalupe Navarro, was shot to death in the northwestern state of Sinaloa as she approached a house with another policeman, who was wounded in the attack, the state prosecutor's office said.

In coastal Nayarit state, a military unit engaged a suspected hit squad for organized crime in a firefight that resulted in the death of five civilians and one soldier, the National Defense secretariat said in a statement.

The fatalities were the latest in a surge of drug-related crime engulfing Mexico, especially the northern regions bordering the United States. More than 28,000 people have been killed since 2006.

The United States meanwhile said that by the end of the year it expects to have disbursed 333 million dollars for Mexico as part of its three-year-old, 1.6 billion dollar Merida Initiative to fight drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America.

The aid, which for Mexico will total 1.3 billion dollars, included seven Bell 412 surveillance helicopters worth 66 million dollars -- five delivered in December 2009, two earlier this month, US State Department drug trafficking expert David Johnson said in Mexico City.