(Adds police chief death, details) By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Respected Mexican journalist Jesus Blancornelas, often threatened and once shot for campaigning against violent drug traffickers on the U.S. border, died of a long-term illness on Thursday aged 70. Co-founder of the Zeta weekly newspaper in the tough city of Tijuana, Blancornelas barely survived an attack in 1997 when drug gang hitmen with assault rifles shot him. The Los Angeles Press Club awarded Blancornelas the Daniel Pearl Award for courageous journalism in 2005 after a long career exposing narco lords and their links to local and state politics. Local health authorities said Blancornelas had suffered from lung illness since a childhood swimming accident. He also had stomach cancer and diabetes. His health gradually deteriorated after he was shot in the lung during the 1997 attack. After shooting, the journalist never went anywhere without more than a dozen armed guards. He wrote a weekly column that was a thorn in the side of drug smugglers, mostly from the Arellano Felix cartel in Tijuana, south of San Diego. "He was the first to name names of the drug mafia and federal forces helping those criminal groups," said Arturo Solis, an online newspaper editor in the border city of Reynosa. Friends and colleagues were murdered by drug gang hitmen. Regarded as the dean of Mexican border reporters, Blancornelas had become less active in recent years and in 2005 he told Reuters the killings of fellow journalists were becoming too much to bear. "We continue to carry out investigations to clear up the murders of our colleagues. But if it wasn't for that, I would be in my house resting," he said. "I regret founding Zeta." Zeta's co-editor Francisco Ortiz was killed in 2004, gunned down in Tijuana in front of his two young children. The Mexican border with the United States has become swamped by drug violence in the last two years as well-armed gangs compete for territory. On Thursday, a lone gunman shot dead a local police chief in the northern state of Nuevo Leon. This year 48 killings in the state have been linked to drug gangs, twice as many as the year before. Suspected narco gunmen with AK-47 rifles and a grenade also killed two people in the Pacific coast tourist resort of Acapulco. The U.S. State Department has warned traveling Americans to avoid areas hit by Mexico's drug wars, which have killed around 2,000 gang members, police and bystanders since 2005. Mexico is one of the deadliest countries in the world for reporters, according to watchdog Reporters Without Borders. The drug feud, which will be one of President-elect Felipe Calderon's biggest challenges when he takes office next week, has also spread to other areas of the country.
