text: MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Suspected drug hitmen killed the mayor of a town outside Mexico's northern business city of Monterrey on Thursday, the fourth public official slain in little over a month, police said. 
   
   Mayor Prisciliano Rodriguez was shot and killed by gunmen as he drove to his ranch in his town of Doctor Gonzalez, 30 miles (50 km) east of Monterrey in Nuevo Leon state, an official at the attorney general's office said. 
   
   It was not immediately clear why Rodriguez, who won the mayorship last year for the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was targeted, but Nuevo Leon and the neighbouring state of Tamaulipas have become major drug war flashpoints since the start of the year. 
   
   Another person travelling with Rodriguez was also killed in the attack, Reforma newspaper reported, but police declined to comment. 
   
   Last month, drug gangs killed a mayor in the Nuevo Leon tourist town of Santiago and another mayor in the Tamaulipas municipality of Hidalgo that lies on a highway to Monterrey. 
   
   Another mayor was killed by suspected drug gangs in the central Mexican state of San Luis Potosi this month. 
   
   President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his presidency on a military-led assault on drug cartels, condemned the two killings in August and has vowed to continue his fight, saying that spiralling violence is a sign that the gangs are desperate and in disarray. 
   
   Rival hitmen from the Gulf cartel and its former armed wing, the Zetas, are fighting over smuggling routes into the United States. Both gangs increasingly target public officials, police and journalists who stand in their way. 
   
   Calderon has blamed the surge in violence around Monterrey and in Tamaulipas on the split between the Gulf and Zetas gang, but faces increasing pressure to calm the killings. More than 29,000 people have been killed in drug violence since Calderon sent more than 45,000 troops and federal police across Mexico in 2006 to battle warring drug gangs, prompting fears that bloodshed could undermine tourism and investment as Mexico slowly recovers from its worst recession since 1932. 
   
   The U.S. government in August told staff at its consulate in Monterrey to send their children out of the city, once considered one of Latin America's safest cities and a top regional business centre. There have been more than 450 drug killings in Monterrey and Nuevo Leon state this year. 
   
   (Reporting by Tomas Bravo; editing by Mohammad Zargham) ||||| Fed Up, A Mexican Town Resorts To Mob Justice 
   
   itoggle caption Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images 
   
   Unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico led residents of a small town in the northern state of Chihuahua to take justice into their own hands. 
   
   This week an angry mob of citizens pursued and allegedly killed two suspected kidnappers, storming a military base to get at the alleged culprits believed to have nabbed a teenage girl. 
   
   With police incapable of stopping the violent crime epidemic in Mexico amid the brutal drug war, it seems some locals in the town of Ascension have had enough. 
   
   Ascension is a farming community of some 15,000 people, about 100 miles south of the border with New Mexico. In the past two years, kidnapping and extortion have been rampant. 
   
   "Our problems with public security have spoiled our progress in this town," says Rafael Camarillo, the outgoing mayor. 
   
   The public fury happened Tuesday when an armed group allegedly kidnapped a 16-year-old girl from her family's seafood restaurant. The kidnappers escaped down a gravel road, and word of the missing girl spread quickly. 
   
   Soon, a group of about 200 residents began the chase. Three of the alleged kidnappers were captured by the Mexican military, who have a presence in the town. 
   
   If the authorities can't protect us, we must protect ourselves. 
   
   Three others fled into a nearby cotton field, where one was later found dead. The other two were hunted down and beaten by the mob from Ascension. 
   
   "When they found them, it was a direct aggression," says Ignacio Rodriguez, a local kitchen-cabinet maker who was elected to head city council next month. 
   
   The girl was rescued unharmed by the residents. 
   
   "We are a small community," says Mari Cruz Salazar Soto, the girl's aunt. "In the past year, we've averaged three kidnappings a week." 
   
   Rodriguez says he knows many people in town whose family members have been kidnapped, and many of them were among the angry crowd. 
   
   "In that moment there was a lot of resentment mixed with rage," he says. 
   
   Rodriguez says people in the mob recognized the two alleged kidnappers, 17-year-old boys who grew up in Ascension. "We don't know why they chose to get mixed up in crime," he says. 
   
   Federal police eventually took custody of the two young men and drove them to the town's small military base. 
   
   Residents say at least 1,000 people then caught up with them at the base and broke through the gates. The mob got ahold of the suspected kidnappers and beat them a second time. 
   
   The crowd then held them for seven hours, locked in a hot vehicle where they eventually died. 
   
   The next day, Mayor Camarillo fired all 14 of the town's police officers and requested assistance from state and federal police. The camera of a local television station captured residents as they stormed city hall on Wednesday morning and demanded the firings. 
   
   Jorge Leyva, a representative of the Chihuahua state police, said an investigation into the deaths of the two suspected kidnappers is under way. 
   
   Three other suspects were detained on charges of kidnapping and illegal weapon possession in the case. 
   
   Rodriguez, the future city councilman, says he's not proud of how his town responded to the kidnapping. Mob violence is not common in Chihuahua, one of the most violent states in the country. 
   
   Rodriguez says citizens in Ascension are forming a sort of neighborhood watch committee and are still deciding how the committee will operate. 
   
   "If the authorities can't protect us," he says, "we must protect ourselves."
target: – At least seven people were killed in Acapulco yesterday in what police believe was a clash between rival drug gangs. Guns and grenades were used to attack a house in a residential part of the resort city, AP reports. Further north, suspected cartel hitmen killed the mayor of a small town outside Monterrey as he drove to his ranch. Mayor Prisciliano Rodriguez is the fourth public official assassinated in Mexico in just over a month, Reuters reports. As cartel violence continues to plague Mexico with no end in sight, mob justice is on the rise, reports NPR. In a small town in Chihuahua state where kidnapping and extortion have soared over the last two years, a mob pursued a gang that had kidnapped a teen girl, killing one and beating two others. Police took the beaten pair to a military base, where a crowd of around 1,000 broke through the gates, seized the men, and locked them in a hot vehicle where they eventually died. The town's mayor fired all 14 of the town's police officers the next day.