More than 200 people have been killed over the past seven days in Mexico's most violent week since President Felipe Calderón unleashed federal forces against the country's warring drug cartels. In the latest slayings, on June 16 Nuevo León state investigators in the Monterrey suburb of Apodaca recovered the bodies of five municipal police officers who had been abducted at dawn from their homes by armed men. Their bodies, with signs of torture, were found in an abandoned plot of land with a threatening "narco-message." One had been decapitated. Dozens of police have been killed in the Monterrey area in recent months. Authorities also said an armed commando executed three local youths in the Monterrey barrio of Primero de Mayo. (El Universal, El Financiero, Houston Chronicle, June 16)

Violence in Mexico claimed the lives of 15 federal police officers and 29 prison inmates in three separate incidents June 14. Twelve officers were killed when police returning from patrol in four pickups were ambushed by gunmen in the city of Zitácuaro, Michoacán. Several assailants were also killed or wounded, but officials did not provide exact figures. Gunmen also killed three federal police agents on patrol in Ciudad Juárez, and wounded one more. At Aguaruto prison in Culiacán, Sinaloa, 21 inmates were shot to death and three guards were wounded when a group of prisoners attacked members of a rival gang within the facility. Hours later, eight more prisoners were stabbed to death by other inmates. An AK-47 assault rifle and two large-caliber handguns were confiscated. (CNN, AP, LAHT, June 15)

Bill Conroy writes for the Narcosphere, June 12:

A special operations task force under the command of the Pentagon is currently in place south of the border providing advice and training to the Mexican Army in gathering intelligence, infiltrating and, as needed, taking direct action against narco-trafficking organizations, claims a former CIA asset who has a long history in the covert operations theater.

Narco-violence claimed 39 lives in two northern Mexico states June 11. In Chihuahua, up to 30 gunmen stormed a drug rehabilitation center in the state capital Chihuahua City near midnight and executed 19 men and wounded four others. The victims, all reportedly addicts being treated by the clinic, were forced to lie face down in a hallway and were then shot, witnesses told local media. Rehab centers are reportedly being used as fronts by drug gangs who recruit "mules" among the recovering addicts, and have been a target in the warfare between rival cartels. One day earlier, unidentified assailants killed one man and wounded another at a rehab center in Ciudad Juárez. More than 60 people have died in mass shootings at Mexican rehab clinics in a little less than two years.

Mexican and US authorities are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who was shot late June 7 near the Juárez-El Paso crossing, apparently by a US Border Patrol agent. Eyewitnesses said Sergio Hernández was playing with friends in a dry area of the river that forms the border. Crossing momentarily into the US with his friends, he was chased by a patrol agent. He ran back onto Mexican soil, hid behind a steel wall—and was shot in the head when looked out.

As many as 2,000 Mexican federal police and Sonora state police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine on the night of June 6, firing tear gas and attacking and beating workers who were defending the mine. With the police having cleared the mine, managers from Grupo Mexico, the mine owner, took control of the facilities. The company reported that it had 2,000 "contractors" ready to go to work as soon as it was safe to do so.

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, has accused BASF Corp., Murphy Energy Corp. and three other US companies of knowingly buying stolen natural gas condensate from Mexican bandits, according to a lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, the company's production unit, accused the companies of facilitating a black market in natural gas condensate stolen from Pemex's Burgos Field on Mexico's Gulf Coast. As much as $300 million in liquids have been smuggled across the border in hijacked tanker trucks since 2006, Pemex asserts.

Two indigenous Mexican women, Teresa González Cornelio and Alberta Alcántara Juan, were released from prison on April 28 after serving more than three and a half years of a 21-year sentence for allegedly kidnapping six agents of the now-defunct Federal Investigation Agency (AFI). Their release followed a unanimous ruling by a five-member panel of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) that the two women, street vendors who belong to the Otomí indigenous group, had been falsely imprisoned. The charges against them stemmed from a March 26, 2006 incident in the market in Santiago Mexquititlán community, Amealco de Bonfil municipality in Querétaro state; the AFI agents had raided the market in an unsuccessful search for pirated DVDs, destroying the women's booth in the process.