JUAREZ, Mexico, July 14 (UPI) -- The number of U.S. tourists traveling into Mexico's most violent city dropped significantly, officials said, blaming the falloff on news of the deadly drug war.
"It is a hard situation," Tourism Director Demetrio Sotomayor of Mexico's Chihuahua state said of the 19 percent drop in U.S. visitors passing through the border city of Juarez so far this month, compared with a year earlier.
About 12,000 people traveled through Juarez from July 1-12, down 2,300 from the same period last year, state figures indicate.
The number of U.S. citizens applying to temporarily take their vehicles into Juarez dropped 26 percent.
"All of that probably has to do with the travel alerts issued by foreign countries to advise their citizens not to travel to Mexico," Sotomayor told the El Paso (Texas) Times.
Twenty-one people were killed in Juarez Tuesday, the year's deadliest day, the Chihuahua state prosecutor's office said.
Juarez, a city of 1.5 million on the Rio Grande, south of El Paso, is ground zero in Mexico's war on drugs, with more than 1,220 homicides so far this year after more than 3,100 homicides last year, the newspaper said.
The U.S. State Department has warned U.S. citizens about Juarez's safety.
"More than a third of all U.S. citizens killed in Mexico in 2010 whose deaths were reported to the U.S. government were killed in the border cities of Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana," south of San Diego, the department said in April.
Sotomayor said police were on alert to protect tourists from criminals and Chihuahua state authorities "just set up medical and road-assistance booths on highways to assist stranded travelers."
