Gunmen kill Mexican jail director

MONTERREY, Mexico - Unknown gunmen killed the director of a jail in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, the latest in a wave of slayings to rock the country, authorities said.

Baja California state prosecutors said pistol-toting assailants fired five shots at Eduardo Villalobos as he left his home in the city, which lies south of the border from Calexico, California.

Villalobos was formerly the head of the police organised crime task force in Mexicali, a notorious hub in the cross-border trade in cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines.

No arrests have been made in the killing.

About 500 people have died in gangland shootings across Mexico this year in a surge of violence linked to cartels battling for control of the international drug trade.

President Vicente Fox on Monday blamed opposition leaders for the failure to halt the violence after a package of sweeping justice system reforms, including measures to make police more effective, stalled in Congress.

- REUTERS