**A senior member of a Mexican drug cartel has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the murders of 17 people at a rehab centre, reports say.**Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, a suspected hitman and drug smuggler, was held in connection with the murders in the city of Juarez, near the border with Texas.
He has long been on wanted lists held by both the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Administration.
It is understood he was arrested by Mexican troops on Friday.
He is believed to be behind the attack last week in which gunmen stormed into a drug treatment clinic, lined patients up against a wall and killed at least 17 of them.
The BBC’s Stephen Gibbs, in Mexico, says the attack shocked even the violence-weary residents of Ciudad Juarez, where there have been an average of 10 murders every day this year.
Juarez is the setting of a vicious turf war, principally between two gangs - the Juarez cartel, and the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Mexico’s most wanted man and reported billionaire, Joaquin Guzman.
The gangs are fighting for control of the local drug market, and smuggling roots into the United States.
About 1,400 people have died in Juarez’s drug violence this year.
Thousands of extra police and troops have been deployed in Ciudad Juarez to try to stem the violence.
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