Drug Gang Violence ~> Very Bad Things Are Happening In Honduras

MEXICO CITY, Mexico — A battle this week that killed at least 17 people in a remote corner of the Caribbean coast of Honduras underscores the deteriorating security situation in what already ranks among the world's deadliest countries.

The fight between two alleged cocaine smuggling gangs claimed the lives of an undisclosed number of women and children, and killed the leaders of both groups, officials said.

It came as the Honduran military took control of the country's violent gang-controlled prison systems and amid a national debate over militarizing public security altogether.

Honduras, along with neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala, has a become major transshipment point for South American cocaine routed through Mexico toward US consumers. Drug trafficking intensified the already rampant violence, much of it between local street gangs known as maras. 

“The security situation remains dire throughout the region and is at a crisis level in Honduras,” Eric Olson, an expert on regional violence at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC, told a US congressional committee recently. “Organized crime in all its many manifestations — transnational drug traffickers; criminal transportation networks; and even youth gangs — continue to prosper.” More