Soldiers began nightly patrols on the streets of Nezahualcoyotl, a working class municipality of Mexico state, on January 18, two days after a shootout in a residential area left eight youths dead.

The poor municipality, which lies barely 15 miles (20 kilometers) east of the capital's historical center, has long been a port of entry for drug dealers to Mexico City.

Suspected battles between drug traffickers broke out there at the end of 2010.

Local police chief Victor Torres blamed the fighting on a split within La Familia drug gang, which is based in western Mexico, and suggested that the notoriously violent Zetas gang could also be involved.

"That's why we decided on high impact operations with the participation of soldiers," Torres told AFP.

The municipality of some one million inhabitants also only has around 1,600 police.

Mexican authorities blame more than 34,600 killings in the past four years on violence involving the country's powerful drug gangs, who are also involved in human trafficking, kidnappings and extortion.

Violence has risen since tens of thousands of troops were deployed, mainly in northern and western areas, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive on organized crime on taking office in 2006.

Security operations have since expanded, including to the Pacific resort city of Acapulco, which has seen a spate of particularly gruesome killings in recent months.

Beheadings and drug gang threats began to spread fear last year around Cuernavaca, a popular weekend retreat south of Mexico City, as the killing of top drug lord Arturo Beltran Leyva set off a wave of violence.

Some now fear it is only a matter of time before violence and military operations spread in the capital, which already has a reputation for insecurity and crime.

"The nightmare of pain, fear, abandon, death, desperation seen in many regions of the country ... could occur with all its intensity in Nezahualcoyotl, Mexico state, and other districts, and come to the Federal District (Mexico City)," newspaper columnist Juan Arvizu wrote in La Universal daily this week.

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has refused to let the army patrol the capital's streets, but has ordered reinforcements of riot police on the border with Mexico state, according to a government official who requested anonymity.

Federal security forces this week carried out a series of surprise raids on houses in central areas of the city, provoking criticism from human rights defenders who questioned whether they were within the law.

Mexico City authorities declined to comment on the raids, but city Attorney General Miguel Angel Mancera told local radio Wednesday that he had received no reports of the presence of drug gangs in the Mexican capital.

Wealthier municipalities of Mexico state, which spreads around the top half of the capital, have meanwhile made the headlines in recent months as hideouts for drug traffickers, such as Edgar Valdez Villareal, known as "The Barbie," who was captured in the state last August.

Seven key drug traffickers were detained in 2010 in anti-drug operations nationwide, which the government lauded as signs of the success of the military clampdown, along with significant drug and weapons hauls.

But critics, such as Amnesty International, increasingly underline alleged army abuses in areas where troops have been deployed to take on drug gangs, including the fatal shooting of two children at a roadblock in northeastern Mexico last April.

"The army's presence has only provoked more violence. The government has not understood that the strategy needs to be redefined because it hasn't worked to overload with the armed forces," independent security analyst Max Morales told AFP.

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