World Jun. 27, 2008 - 05:39AM JST ( 5 )

MEXICO CITY —

Unknown assailants shot to death a Federal Police commander and his bodyguard in a Mexico City restaurant at mid-day on Thursday, Mexican officials said.

Igor Labastida, head of the Traffic and Contraband office of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), was shot dead along with one of his bodyguards, spokesperson Minerva Amado with the attorney general’s office (PGR) said.

“Two subjects got out of a black vehicle, entered a restaurant where the commander was eating and opened fire on him and his escorts,” said Amado.

Two other Labastida bodyguards were wounded and hospitalized, Amado said. Police are searching for the attackers.

Gunmen on May 8 assassinated the acting federal police chief Edgar Millan. A day later assailants killed Esteban Robles, commander of Mexico City’s anti-kidnapping police.

And top federal organized crime investigator Roberto Velasco was gunned down at his home in the capital May 6. He died in hospital shortly thereafter.

Since December 2006, President Felipe Calderon’s federal government has deployed 36,000 military troops and thousands of police around the country in an operation aimed at clamping down on organized crime.

The highest death toll of the drug war is in the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez, where some 500 people have been killed this year.

AFP