ACAPULCO, Mexico — About 500 residents of Mexico’s resort city of Acapulco marched with banners and placards to demand an end to violent crime yesterday, just 10 days after gunmen burst into two police stations and killed five police officers and two secretaries.Businesspeople, community activists and families and children — many dressed in white to symbolise their call for peace — took part in the march through Acapulco’s hotel zone as passing motorists honked their horns in support.

However, march organiser Sari Enriquez said many residents live in fear. In the past 14 months, 250 people have been killed, many as the result of turf battles between drug gangs.

“That is why the march is taking place, because here we all live in fear ... even people who can hire private security services,” Enriquez said. “It is sad that it has to come to this, because we spend a lot of money for public safety.”

Enriquez said tourism in the once-vibrant resort is suffering because of the violence. Last month, a Canadian man was killed under disputed circumstances — authorities say he was hit by a car but relatives say he was beaten to death at a night club. And this month, two more Canadians were wounded by gunfire.

“We are losing a large part of tourism ... because of the lack of safety,” Enriquez said.

Yesterday was fairly calm in Acapulco, although violence continued elsewhere in Mexico.

Near the northern city of Monterrey, a one-year-old girl was shot in the head by a bullet and her father wounded by unidentified assailants who fired on the vehicle they were travelling in, the government news agency Notimex reported.

The infant was listed in critical condition at a local hospital, and her father had three gunshot wounds and was listed in serious condition. The motive of the attack was not immediately known.

In the northern state of Chihuahua, police said yesterday that they had found the bodies of three young men, all shot in the head, in the trunk of a car abandoned near the city of Madera, about 180 miles south of the border with New Mexico.