Mexicans protest crime at soccer match

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-07 11:04

MEXICO CITY -- Tens of thousands of Mexican soccer fans dressed in white at an international game in the Azteca Stadium on Saturday to protest rising crime and a brutal drug war that has killed more than 2,700 people this year.

At least three-quarters of the 100,000 fans answered a call by Mexico's soccer federation to dress in white. The Mexican team also wore white in the World Cup qualifier against Jamaica rather than its traditional green uniforms.

Moments before the game started, the federation covered the pitch with a huge white sheet as part of the protest. Mexico won the match 3-0.

More than 150,000 people attended an anti-crime rally in the Mexican capital last weekend. Between 2004 and 2007, kidnapping jumped almost 40 percent in Mexico.

Mexico ranks with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia as among the worst countries for abductions. Rival drug gangs fighting over smuggling routes to the United States have sparked an unprecedented wave of killings since 2006.

About 20 suspected drug hitmen killed seven municipal police officers in a shootout in the western state of Michoacan on Saturday, Mexican media reported.

The recent kidnapping and murder of Fernando Marti, 14, the son of a well-known businessman, sparked an outcry in a country already hardened to crime.

President Felipe Calderon, who has sent 45,000 troops across Mexico to fight drug violence, last month pledged to cut kidnapping and crime within 100 days.