MEXICO CITY - The number of homicides in Mexico rose by nearly a quarter in 2010 compared with the year before as the drug war intensified, Mexican statisticians said this week.
The National Institute of Statistics and Geography recorded 24,374 homicides last year, a 23 percent increase from 19,803 in 2009. Last year's figure represented 22 killings for every 100,000 residents.
Many, but not all, of the homicides were committed by organized crime organizations, the institute told The Associated Press Thursday.
Violence has risen in many Mexican regions as a result of drug trafficking and other organized criminal activity. President Felipe Calderón's office has said that more than 15,000 homicides in 2010 were attributed to organized crime.
According to the statistics institute, the U.S.-bordering state of Chihuahua saw the most homicides with 4,747. Sinaloa, in northwestern Mexico, registered 2,505.
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Sinaloa is the headquarters of the Sinaloa Cartel, while Chihuahua includes the violent border city of Ciudad Juarez. Those two states are among the most affected by drug violence, and together they accounted for 29 percent of Mexico's homicides.
The institute cautioned that its information was preliminary and said it awaited definitive results to be released in September.
In the northern state of Zacatecas, prosecutors said a town mayor was found shot to death alongside a slain local farm-union official Thursday, a day after they were kidnapped by gunmen.
Elsewhere, more than 2 tons of marijuana was seized by authorities in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, along with weapons and a vehicle, the Defense Department reported.
And military officials reported the seizure of 22 tons of ethyl phenylacetate in the port of Manzanillo in Colima state that had been shipped from Shekou, China. The chemical is used in the production of methamphetamine.
