Francisco Blake Mora
© AP Photo/Eduardo VerdugoFrancisco Blake Mora, 45, started his political career in the mid-1990s
Mexico's war against brutal drug cartels suffered a devastating blow on Friday night after a helicopter crash killed the country's top security official in charge of the fight against cartels.

Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora's helicopter came down on the outskirts of the capital, Mexico City, with at least seven other people on board.

He became the second interior minister to be killed in an aviation crash in just over three years after his predecessor, Juan Camilo Mourino, was killed in a small aeroplane crash in a November 2008.

Television images showed the scattered wreckage on a hillside south of the city. There were no survivors.

Government spokeswoman Alejandra Sota said: "Unfortunately the Interior Secretary, his collaborators and the helicopter crew were found dead."

Blake Mora, 45, had been travelling from Mexico City to meet prosecutors in Cuernavaca, in the neighbouring state of Morelos. Two other government officials were also on board. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the crash.

The interior secretary is Mexico's second most senior official after the president, overseeing internal political affairs and security, making him a key figure in the battle against drugs.

He was regarded by many as an embodiment of the Mexican government's get-tough attitude on drug dealing, publicly pledging to bring the fight to the traffickers instead of backing down.

Mexico is locked in a brutal conflict against drug cartels that has killed 45,000 people in the last five years and seen a string of high profile massacres, and beheadings and mutilations by rival drug gangs.

Blake Mora acted as President Felipe Calderon's point man, frequently travelling to the country's most violent and dangerous places for meetings with besieged state and local security officials.

He was appointed Interior Secretary by Mr Calderon in July 2010 with a brief that included improving security and cracking down on widespread violence.

In April, Blake Mora pledged to step up the presence of troops and federal police in the northern state of Tamaulipas after 116 bodies were found dumped in pits near the US border.

More than a dozen suspects tied to the ultra-violent Zetas drug gang were detained in relation to the killings and some confessed to abducting passengers from buses and killing them.

At the time Blake Mora said: "Organised crime, in its desperation, resorts to committing atrocities that we can't and shouldn't tolerate as a government and as a society."

Blake Mora blamed the body count on weaknesses in state government, saying there was "evidence, on the one hand, of fragile local institutions' inability to act promptly and effectively in dealing with crime, and, on the other hand, the involvement of local security agents in crime."

He also announced a plan to take back Tamaulipas, including the federal monitoring of transport buses.

In January he unveiled Mexico's first national identity card, with security measures including digitalised fingerprints and iris images, to prevent criminals from using false IDs.

Blake Mora was the fourth man to serve as Interior Minister under Mr Calderon.

Mourino, died in a plane crash in Mexico City on Nov 4, 2008. His small aircraft crashed, killing at least eight people and injuring dozens more. It came down next to a major Mexico City boulevard during rush hour.

Investigators concluded that Mourino's plane had been flying too close to a much bigger jet plane ahead of it on the flight path to land at Mexico City airport, possibly causing a fatal wave of turbulence.

The last tweet on Blake Mora's Twitter account was a tribute to Mourino on Nove 4, 2011.

He said: "Today we remember Juan Camilo Mourino three years after his passing, a human being who worked towards the creation of a better Mexico."

Blake Mora also handled disasters such as flooding and the massive oil pipeline explosion that laid waste to parts of the central city of San Martin Texmelucan last year, killing at least 28 people.

A Mexican government spokesman later said the bodies of Blake Mora and seven others had been recovered. They included Interior Undersecretary Felipe Zamora.

Blake Mora started his political career in the mid-1990s as an official in his native Tijuana and served as a federal congressman through the 2000s.