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Drug traffickers' hitmen kill top Mexico policeman
By Anahi Rama
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Drug hitmen, one wielding a pistol with a silencer, shot dead one of Mexico's top federal police officers at his home on Thursday, in a blow to President Felipe Calderon's fight against cartels.
Three gunmen waited for regional commissioner Edgar Millan at his house in the capital and shot him nine times as he came home early Thursday morning and opened the door from the street, government officials said.
"They were hunting him," a spokesman for the Security Ministry said.
Media reports linked the attackers, one of whom was caught by Millan's bodyguards, to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, headed by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
Millan was the head of operations for a federal police force known as the PFP and was in charge of coordinating large-scale operations to break organized crime rings, including drug trafficking.
Calderon's office condemned the "cowardly murder of an exemplary public servant who was committed to the safety of Mexican families."
Millan took a leading role in the arrest in January of about 12 Sinaloa cartel gunmen. The cartel was rumored to have formed a "special forces" team of killers preparing high-level hits to retaliate against the government for launching an offensive against drug traffickers.
Calderon has sent thousands of troops and federal police to take on drug gangs near the U.S. border and in other parts of Mexico since he took office in December 2006.
Last year, there were more than 2,500 drug killings across Mexico and over 1,100 people have died this year as the drug gangs fight each other and the security forces.
Earlier this week, drug hitmen killed Saul Pena, a senior police officer in Ciudad Juarez, even though the army had deployed troops in the violent city across the border from El Paso, Texas. Pena was due to be named one of city's five police commanders.
Last week, two other senior policemen were killed in Mexico City.
(Additional reporting by Cyntia Barrera Diaz)
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