17 dead, including prosecutor, in Mexico border attacks

Suspected drug violence left 17 people dead in north Mexico in the past 24 hours, including a federal prosecutor and one decapitated victim, officials said Wednesday.

The deaths, which came amid a military crackdown on the nation's powerful drug traffickers, all occurred in Chihuahua state, including 11 in the country's most violent city of Ciudad Juarez.

Unidentified attackers shot dead federal prosecutor Jose Ibarra Limon overnight Tuesday in the city across from El Paso, Texas, police investigators said. Ibarra Limon had been investigating the 2008 murder of a local journalist.

Elsewhere, police found a decapitated male body with machete marks on the chest outside state capital Chihuahua City, the attorney general's office said.

One murder also occurred at less than 100 meters (yards) from a hotel where Interior Minister Fernando Gomez Mont, on a visit to the region, had been staying, local police said.

Gomez Mont arrived in Chihuahua Wednesday to investigate violence linked to organized crime.

More than 7,700 people have died in suspected drug attacks across Mexico since the start of 2008, despite a government clampdown involving tens of thousand of troops.