12/15/2010 -Ciudad Juarez—the Mexican border city just across the Rio Grande River from El Paso, Texas—yesterday reached a morbid milestone: over 3,000 people have been murdered in 2010 alone with 16 days left in the year.

Here's CNN.com with the details:

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, made its own history Tuesday as its homicide rate reached 3,000 deaths for the year -- 10 times the number of killings annually that the border city counted just a few years ago.

With two weeks left in the year, 2010 is now the deadliest year Juarez has ever seen, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office told CNN.

"At 12:15 p.m. we hit 3,000 murders for the year. The state attorney general's office had the number at 2,998 as of Monday and with the two murders today that brings us to 3,000," spokesman Arturo Sandoval said in a phone interview with CNN late Tuesday.

For those readers who are fluent in Spanish, you can read Juarez's own El Darioreport the news.

Over the course of three years,nearly 7,400 people have been murderedin the infamous border city, reports the Associated Press. Juarez is considered by many to be the murder capital of the word as drug cartels; federal, state, and local law enforcement; petty criminals; and gang members all vie for control of the city.

In October, I traveled to both El Paso and Juarez to investigate how El Paso remains one of the safest cities in the United States when its neighboring sister city has become a slaughterhouse of murder and violence. You can read what I discovered in December's cover story, "Bordering on Danger."

♦ Picture of Juarez from El Paso bydherrera_96/Flickr