The Obama administration has called Mexican drug cartels "the single greatest organised crime threat to America". But why are the cartels fighting each other with American guns?

Jim Pruett still has the boulder that suspected weapons traffickers dumped through the glass front of his Houston gun store last month.

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Top 12 dealers of guns seized in Mexico

This year's death toll in drug-related violence in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, the hardest hit by Mexico's drug war, rose to 3,000 Tuesday after two men were shot dead on a street, authorities said.

Ciudad Juarez has seen its homicide rate rise to one of the highest in the world after vicious turf battles broke out between gangs representing the Juarez and Sinaloa drug cartels in 2008.

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Teresa Margolles ist diplomierte Gerichtsmedizinerin - auch in ihrer künstlerischen Arbeit widmet sie sich den Toten, zu ihren Materialien gehören Blut und Körperfette. Im Fridericianum in Kassel hat sie jetzt einen monumentalen Andachtsraum für die Opfer des mexikanischen Drogenkriegs geschaffen.

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The US has lost confidence in the Mexican army's ability to win the country's drugs war, branding it slow, clumsy and no match for "sophisticated" narco-traffickers.

Classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks also reveal a growing sense of alarm within Mexico's government that time is running out in the battle against organised crime and that it could "lose" entire regions.

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Drug lords have forced a Mexican newspaper to pull back from its hard-hitting coverage of the country's vicious gang warfare after apparently killing one of its journalists.

Luis Carlos Santiago, 21, was shot dead last week while sitting in a parked car (above) in Ciudad Juarez. He had been working as a trainee photographer for El Diario, a newspaper that has built a reputation for its in-depth reporting of the drug-related violence that has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 people in Juarez so far this year.

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Es ist ein Triumph der Gewalt und eine Niederlage des Rechtsstaats: Eine mexikanische Tageszeitung hat die Drogenkartelle um klare Anweisungen gebeten, was veröffentlicht werden soll und was nicht. Zuvor waren Journalisten erschossen worden.

Ciudad Juárez - Die führende Tageszeitung in Mexikos Drogenhochburg Ciudad Juárez hat an die rivalisierenden Rauschgiftkartelle appelliert, ihre Gewalttaten gegen Journalisten des Blattes einzustellen. "Wir wollen, dass Sie uns erklären, was Sie von uns wollen - was wir veröffentlichen sollen und was wir nicht mehr veröffentlichen sollen", wandte sich das "Diario de Juárez" in einem am Sonntag veröffentlichten Leitartikel auf seiner Titelseite direkt an die Drogenbosse.

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A gunbattle between Mexican soldiers and suspected drug cartel members left 22 dead at ranch near the U.S. border, the Defense Department said Thursday.

All the dead were suspected gang members, the department said in a statement. One soldier was injured.

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Blog Del Narco, the anonymous tracker of Mexico's ultraviolent drug war

Interviewed by Raul Gutierrez for Boing Boing

The news arrives with disturbing regularity: 72 bodies found, a federal policeman killed, 4 men decapitated and hung from a bridge, 19 corpses found, 33 men executed, a massacre at a La Quinta Inn, Girl Assassin Squad Discovered.

This isn't news from Baghdad, it's a single week of headlines from Blog Del Narco, Mexico's rawest source of news on the ultraviolence engulfing the country. Until recently, the factional chaos was mostly confined to "Lost Cities" like Cuidad Juarez and Tijuana. Now, entire states are spiraling out of control.

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