The violence and killing in Mexico between rival drug cartels is has shown no signs of easing in the first three months of the year.

From the International Herald Tribune:

A turf war between drug cartels has claimed more than 210 lives in the first three months of this year, more than twice the number of homicides for the same period last year. Several mass graves, hiding a total of 36 bodies, have been discovered in the backyards of two houses belonging to drug dealers.

At the height of the violence, around Easter, bodies were turning up every morning, at a rate of almost 12 a week. The mayor and the governor of Ciudad Juárez asked the federal government to intervene.

“Neither the municipal government, nor the state government, is capable of taking on organized crime,” Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said in an interview.

So in late March, President Felipe Calderón sent 2,026 soldiers and 425 federal agents to Ciudad Juárez, where they continue to patrol in convoys of humvees and pickups. They dare not show their faces and wear ski masks.

The mortuary in Juárez is full of more than 50 unclaimed and unidentified bodies, the mayor said, proof that many of the soldiers in the underworld war are coming from other parts of the country.

The cartels are fighting over the estimated $23 billion in revenue from illicit drugs in Mexico.