MEXICO CITY — The death toll in Mexico's drug war has surpassed 2,000 this year, with a newspaper editor found dead in the resort city of Zihuatanejo and a police commander assassinated in Tijuana apparently among the latest victims, according to news reports.
Another police commander was killed Monday in the northern city of Monterrey, and four people were reported killed in the southern state of Guerrero.
No government agency keeps a tally of the drug-related killings, but according to human rights organizations and newspapers, an average of six people are killed in the country's drug wars every day.
The newspaper El Universal said Saturday that its tally of drug-related killings for the year had reached 2,012. Last year, more than 1,500 people were killed in violence related to a lucrative trade in illicit drugs, including cocaine and methamphetamines.
The death Friday of Misael Tamayo Hernandez, the editor of the daily newspaper El Despertar de la Costa, appeared to be the sixth killing of a Mexican journalist this year, Reporters Without Borders said.
But in a country where drug killings are often public events -- a hail of bullets on a busy street, a decapitated head deposited on the steps of a government building -- Tamayo's death was different.
He died before dawn in a Zihuatanejo hotel room, officials said. His sister Ruth Tamayo, who identified his body at the hotel, said he was neither shot, nor strangled with a towel, nor tied up and executed, as reported by various local media.
The editor was found with three puncture wounds on his shoulder, she said. The coroner established the cause of death as a heart attack, but could not rule out foul play until a toxicology report was complete, officials said.
"We still haven't managed to understand what happened," Ruth Tamayo said. "We're very sad, our entire family is distraught. We still can't believe it."
Having last seen him Thursday morning, Tamayo's family and co-workers became worried after he failed to show up at a 6:30 p.m. meeting at his newspaper. Within an hour, reporters and family members began searching for him.
"My brother never let the paper go to print like that," Ruth said. "The newspaper was his passion. He was the kind to call in every 10 minutes to see how things were going."
