[progchat_action] Guatemalan mayor assassinated
 
Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 19:55:03 -0500 (CDT)


Guatemalan mayor assassinated

Al Jazeera
August 15, 2007

A Guatemalan mayor has been assassinated along the border with Mexico.

Werner Velasquez was killed as he was leaving the house of a candidate he
was backing in forthcoming local elections, bringing to more than 40 the
number killed in what officials say is the bloodiest election campaign since
civil war ended a decade ago.

Two other people were wounded in the attack on Monday.

The local municipal election is taking place alongside the September 9
presidential poll.

Mariano Diaz, the governor of the surrounding Huehuetenango department,
confirmed the incident with Guatemalan radio.

Elected mayor of Santa Ana Huista in 2003, Velasquez, 29, was not seeking
re-election.

He was campaigning for Rolando Morales of the rival Grand National Alliance
party to succeed him.

The mayor is the latest in a stream of politicians, activists and workers
from different parties who were murdered this year as drug traffickers and
former paramilitaries fight over the elections for president, congress and
municipalities.

Velasquez was the 19th member of presidential favourite Alvaro Colom's
National Unity for Hope party (UNE), which is struggling to rid its ranks of
the influence of organised crime groups and drug gangs, to be killed since
last year.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu's party has suffered at least
three gun attacks this month.

Guatemala, Central America's most populous nation and one of the most
violent countries on the continent, is still suffering the after-effects of
its 1960-1996 civil war which left nearly a quarter of a million people dead
or missing.

Last year almost 6,000 people were murdered in common crime or gang feuds
which political scientists blame on civil war era paramilitaries now used by
organized crime gangs.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A401B4FD-15D2-48DC-867B-785FD9F8C6AE.
htm

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