Wire services
El Universal
November 09, 2005

Hours after a new top security official took office in this violent border city, police found the corpse of a brutally beaten woman lying among garbage in a vacant lot near the international airport.

Police said the woman, whose age was estimated between 30 and 35, was found face up with her shirt pulled up to show her stomach.

She was severely bruised, and an autopsy was scheduled to determine the cause of death, said special prosecutor Claudia Cony Velarde.

Next to the corpse police found a purse with identification that showed the woman worked at one of Juárez's maquiladora assembly plants. The victim's name was withheld pending notification of her family.

More than 350 women have been killed since 1993 in Juárez, a city of about 1.3 million people across the U.S. border from El Paso , Texas .

At least 100 killings appear to fit a pattern where a young, slender woman was sexually assaulted, strangled and dumped in the desert outside Juárez.

Guillermo Prieto Quintana was sworn in as the city's public safety secretary on Tuesday, after his predecessor resigned, citing problems with his staff