A Mexican study ranked Colombian cities Medellin and Cali among the top ten most violent in the world, with Cali sixth and Medellin ninth.
According to reports by Caracol TV, Ciudad Juarez in Mexico came first for the second year in a row, with 2,568 deaths in the past year, which represents a murder rate of 191 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The most violent cities were ranked as followed: after Ciudad Juarez came San Pedro Sula in Honduras, with 119 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants last year, followed by San Salvador (El Salvador) with 95, Caracas (Venezuela) with 94, Guatemala (Guatemala) with 86, Cali with 73, Tegucigalpa (Honduras) with 69, New Orleans (U.S.) with 69, Medellin with 62 and Cape Town (South Africa) with 60.
“The people of Juarez and Mexico are caught in a daily fight between different drug cartels, and a government that has crossed its arms and given up,” said Jose Antonio Ortega, president of the Mexican Citizen Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice. There was a 800% increase in deaths in the city between 2007 and 2009.
In Medellin, where violence exploded because of ongoing gang warfare, the murder rate went from 871 in 2008 to 1,431 in 2009, a 64% rise. Meanwhile in Cali the murder rate increased from 1,384 in 2008 to 1,615 in 2009, a 16% rise.