Mexico City, Mar 10 (EFE).- Relatives of the 16 people, the majority of them students, massacred in January in the border city of Juarez have called on the Senate to create a special committee to investigate the killings and restore order to Mexico's most violent city.
Parents and neighbors of the victims took their demands for justice on Tuesday to the upper house of Mexico's Congress, calling for a group of observers, both Mexican and foreign, to be sent to Ciudad Juarez, considered the country's most violent city, to promote peace.
"There has been no response from local authorities in Ciudad Juarez or (authorities) in Chihuahua state, or from anybody, and we don't trust the investigation. We want a group of independent investigators, so that, with their presence, we can get real answers," Patricia Davila, who lost two nephews in the massacre, said in a press conference.
The special committee could help stem the wave of drug-related violence in Juarez and Chihuahua, which accounted for 3,250 of the 7,724 murders blamed on organized crime groups last year in Mexico, Davila said.
"We are going to fight so that tranquility returns to Ciudad Juarez. We have no security," Davila said.
Davila and the relatives of five other victims met with Senate officials, including the body's president, Carlos Navarrete, who promised to help them.
The Senate agreed to send a legislative committee to Ciudad Juarez next week to gather information and to ask the Supreme Court to look into the case, Davila said.
About 60 people, most of them students from different schools, were celebrating a birthday on Jan. 31 at a house in Juarez, located across the border from El Paso, Texas, when the gunmen arrived.
The gunmen burst into the house, separated the females from the rest of the group and opened fire on the males, killing 13 of them, officials said.
Three other victims later died from their wounds.
President Felipe Calderon has traveled to Juarez twice since the massacre, meeting with the victims' parents and vowing to create a security plan to fight violence in the border city.
The federal government has deployed an additional 800 Federal Police officers in Juarez, bringing the total to 1,200, with some 8,000 army troops also operating in the area.
The federal government, meanwhile, unveiled a social development program Tuesday funded with 700 million pesos ($54 million) to improve conditions in Ciudad Juarez.
The program, part of the "Todos somos Juarez" (We Are All Juarez) strategy, seeks to "rescue" public spaces, improve 5,000 houses, pave streets and deal with poverty, among other things, the Social Development Secretariat said.
A telephone help line for crime victims and their relatives has been established in the border city, officials said.
Calderon plans to travel to the border city once again next Tuesday to discuss the social development program.
