April 2011 death toll highlights trauma of Mexican bloodbath

More than 1,400 gangland killings were clocked, by one newspaper's count, giving April 2011 the highest death toll of the 53 months since President Felipe Calderon unleashed the military and federal police against the country's crime syndicates. The toll includes more than 300 bodies pulled from mass graves near the South Texas border and in other northern Mexican states. Many of the graves' victims were killed weeks, even months earlier. Still, nearly 40 people a day were slain in April 2011, according to Milenio, the newspaper that tallied the 1,402 deaths. In the last week of April 2011 alone, gunmen abducted 11 city police officers, including the force's chief, in a Monterrey suburb.