Mexican President Felipe Calderón said Dec. 19 his government "does not and will never negotiate" with the drug lords, and vowed to press ahead with his military crackdown on the cartels. Drug-related deaths have doubled this year, to more than 5,300, despite the deployment of 36,000 troops across the country. Mexico has also extradited a record 85 criminal suspects to the US so far this year. Mexico extradited 83 in 2007 and 63 in 2006, but still refuses to extradite anyone who could face the death penalty. (AP, Dec. 21; AFP, Dec. 20)

On Dec. 21, the Mexican army arrested 15 accused operatives of the Sinaloa Cartel in a raid on a house in Monterrey. The raid involved 50 heavily armed soldiers in ski-masks who surrounded the house in a convoy of 10 vehicles. Arms, drugs and radio equipment were confiscated. Authorities said no shots were fired. (Cronica de Hoy, Dec. 21)

See our last posts on Mexico's drug war.

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