U.S. soldier dies in drug attack in Mexico strip bar

Ciudad Juarez is reckoned to be one of the world's most violent cities as it has become the bloodiest flashpoint in Mexico's three-year fight against feuding drug cartels.

As cartels fight over the city's local drug market and smuggling routes into the United States, dealers, addicts, cops and hitmen are all targeted by rivals in a spiralling and increasingly chaotic drug war.

Dozens of bars and drug rehab clinics have been attacked by drug hitmen this year and more than 2,000 people have died in drug violence in Ciudad Juarez in 2009 despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police sent in to stop the killings.

A recent Mexican study put the city's homicide rate higher than notorious murder capitals including Venezuela's Caracas, the U.S. city of New Orleans and South Africa's Cape Town.

Despite U.S. anti-drug aid for Mexico, the escalating conflict, a major concern in Washington, threatens to overwhelm Mexican state security forces as wealthy cartels have amassed huge arsenals of weapons and grenades.

The violence has scared tourists away from border cities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana just as Mexico is reeling from its worst economic recession since the 1930s.

(Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in Mexico City; Editing by Todd Eastham)