5,000 Mexican families flee amid violence

Mexico City, Nov 27 (IANS/EFE) Over 5,000 families have fled Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez city on the border with the US in the last six months amid intensifying drug-related violence, officials said.

More than 2,700 people have been killed so far this year, the National Fund for Worker Housing Institute said Friday.

In a separate report, the Safety and Civic Coexistence Observatory said some 230,000 people have fled Ciudad Juarez since 2008 and that over half of those have settled in American territory.

Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas, suffers an average of eight murders a day and has registered nearly 8,000 homicides since the beginning of 2008.

–IANS/EFE