Mexican Border City Protests Army Operations

Some 2,300 people carried signs and choked up traffic to protest the army`s deployment to drug hot spots along the border.

Hundreds of residents in a Mexican border city briefly blocked access roads to the United States on Saturday to protest army operations against drug cartels which they say put children and families at risk, Mexican daily El Universal reported.

Some 2,300 people, some with their children, carried signs and choked up traffic on the busy crossing between Reynosa and Texas to protest the army's deployment to drug hot spots along the border, which have turned the region into a battleground, the paper said in its online edition.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers and police across the country to take on powerful drug traffickers, but the frontal assault has failed to curb violence with more than 5,700 people murdered last year alone.

The northern state of Tamaulipas, where Reynosa is located, is known as the home of the Gulf Cartel, whose feared armed-wing, the Zetas, are famed for torturing and decapitating rivals.

Human rights groups have raised concerns about army abuses against citizens in the government's anti-drug operations, complaining there have been arbitrary detentions and heavily-armed shootouts in the street without regard to the people living nearby.

A Reynosa newspaper said demonstrators also protested against car import rules and demanded more local government support for farmers.