Drug gangs kill nine in Honduras as violence grows

Another day in Mexico .

(Reuters) -
Suspected drug hitmen killed nine people in Tegucigalpa in one of the deadliest attacks in Honduras since Mexican drug kingpins escalated their war over smuggling routes, police said on Sunday.

Masked men with automatic weapons opened fire in the street in a poor area of the Honduran capital on Saturday night and then burst into two houses, killing seven men and two women, police said. Several bodies lay in the street, oozing blood, police said.

"These deaths were provoked by territorial disputes between drug traffickers," Tegucigalpa's police chief Mario Chamorro told reporters.

Since last year, drug violence has been rising in Honduras, a key transit route for Colombian cocaine heading to the United States, as powerful Mexican cartels fight over smuggling corridors through Mexico and Central America.

Some 1,600 people died in drug violence in Honduras in 2009. Honduran authorities say Mexico's top trafficker, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, is trying to crush rivals from the ruthless Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico who are also fighting for control in Central America.