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Something Extra: Most Murderous Cities

MIAMI (CBS4) - An alarming study is out on the fifty most murderous cities in the world.  It's especially scary if you're among the many South Floridians who are from or travel to Latin America.

Forty of the fifty cities with highest homicide rates are there, including fourteen in Brazil and twelve in Mexico.

Worst is San Pedro de Sula in Honduras, with 159 murders per hundred thousand people.

Compare that to about six in New York or nine in Miami.

Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso Texas, dropped to second after taking the top spot three years in a row.

Caracas, Venezuela had the sixth highest murder rate and the drug wars in Cali and Medellin, Colombia pushed those cities into the top twenty.

New Orleans, at twenty-one was the worst American city... Detroit, St. Louis and Baltimore also made the list.

Other than Mosul in Iraq and a couple of South African cities, the Middle East and Africa were notoriously absent despite being considered among the world's most dangerous, especially for Americans.

But the list focused just on murders, and the overwhelming number of those happen among people who know each other.

 

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