Juárez mayor asks for more soldiers

To read the papers around here (El Paso TX ) not much is going on in Jaurez , some of my co-workers live in the wonderful city of Jaurez , and I here some tid bits here and there ! for the most part they are true !
A day last week there was a report on the radio (Mexico) that 18 people were killed by noon ! it never appeared in the papers or online !
Either way it is a war zone south of the border , whether they report it or not !
The cartels own Jaurez !

....El Paso Times
Juárez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz has asked the Mexican army to keep patrolling his city until mid-March as the unrelenting violence continues with several murders a day.

City officials, in a statement asking for more soldiers, said that the "presence of organized crime groups is still too strong" to allow military operations to end.

Reyes had a closed-door meeting in Mexico City on Thursday with some of the nation's top officials: Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont, Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez and Genaro Garcia Luna, the federal public-safety secretary.

Also on Thursday, convoys of Mexican army vehicles and soldiers rolled into Juárez as part of the regular rotation of soldiers done every 60 days.

A spokesman for the federal government's Joint Operation Chihuahua said that about 6,000 soldiers and 1,000 federal police officers are deployed in Juárez, and that 1,200 soldiers patrol alongside city police.

There were plans for the combined soldier-police patrols to be phased out by the end of September as new police recruits hit the streets. But city officials said this week the patrols would continue until the end of the year and Reyes was asking that they be extended until March 15.

The cost of the combined patrols for November and December alone will be 17.2 million pesos (about $1.3 million) from a municipal safety fund, Juárez city officials said.

Mexican federal forces have been in Juárez since spring 2008 in response to the crime crisis.
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Despite the presence of thousands of soldiers and federal police, a war among drug traffickers continues to claim several lives daily. More than 2,000 homicides have occurred in Juárez this year, surpassing the 1,600 a year ago.

Guillermo Dowell Delgado, the Juárez equivalent of a city manager, said the army has made progress.

Dowell said in a statement that the military has made 2,150 arrests, including 45 suspects since late August who allegedly confessed to at least 700 cartel-related murders. The army has also seized 2,532 firearms, plus 100 hand grenades, he said.

"These are impressive quantities," Dowell said, "even if only referring to the weapons, which would be enough to arm 21 companies or more than four infantry battalions."