President Barack Obama is "deeply saddened and outraged" at news of the murders of a federal employee and two relatives of workers at the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, an administration spokesman said.
National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer gave the statement Sunday in response to "brutal murders" of the American consulate employee, her husband and the husband of a consulate employee who was Mexican. Obama "extends his condolences to the families and condemns these attacks on consular and diplomatic personnel serving at our foreign missions," Hammer said. "In concert with Mexican authorities, we will work tirelessly to bring their killers to justice," Hammer added.
Mike Hammer? Maybe they should put him on the case.
Ciudad Juarez, near the Texas border, has been at the center of drug-related violence in Mexico that has claimed nearly 19,000 lives. The State Department authorized relatives of employees at the U.S. consulates in Ciudad Juarez and five other Mexican cities to leave until April 12 out of concerns of rising violence.
U.S. officials have plans to send American intelligence agents to work with Mexican law enforcement to go after the drug cartel, the Washington Post reported last month. Hammer said the United States "will continue to work with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and his government to break the power of the drug trafficking organizations that operate in Mexico and far too often target and kill the innocent. This is a responsibility we must shoulder together, particularly in border communities where strong bonds of history, culture, and common interest bind the Mexican and the American people closely together," he said. |