Mexico attacks leave 17 dead, including police officer

Seventeen people, including a police officer, were killed in a 24-hour period in suspected drug attacks in Mexico, mainly in northern border areas, police and officials said on Wednesday.

Seventeen people, including a police officer, were killed in a 24-hour period in suspected drug attacks in Mexico, mainly in northern border areas, police and officials said on Wednesday.

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Dozens have died so far this year and more than 5,300 died in 2008 as powerful drug cartels fight increasingly bloody turf wars despite a government crackdown including the deployment of some 36,000 troops.

Gunmen traveling in a truck shot dead a police officer and injured three others on Wednesday in the southern state of Oaxaca, rarely touched by drug violence so far, the public security ministry said.

An armed commando flung at least two grenades at the prosecutor's office in northwestern Durango state, injuring two police guards, the state prosecutor told journalists.

Meanwhile, 10 died in the volatile border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, overnight on Tuesday including a 50-year-old man shot dead with his son and a suspect killed in a shootout with police in a shop. Two tortured bodies were also thrown out of a car, police said.

Police found the stabbed body of a 22-year-old woman in a hotel in the border town of Ojinaga, and five died in Chihuahua, capital of the northern state of the same name.