UPDATE 1-Mexico arrests mayors, police chiefs in drug war

(Recasts with mayors arrests; changes dateline from DURANGO)

MORELIA, Mexico, May 26 (Reuters) - Mexican troops rounded up 10 mayors and a string of police chiefs on Tuesday suspected of links to drug gangs in a western state, one of the biggest single corruption sweeps in the government's drug war.

Soldiers burst into police stations and town halls to arrest 27 public officials in Michoacan, the home state of President Felipe Calderon and the place he launched his army-led assault on drug cartels in late 2006.

The officials included a judge and a former police chief who is an aide to the state governor. The attorney general's office said all were suspected of links to drug smugglers.

Calderon has staked his presidency on crushing drug gangs whose turf wars have killed some 2,300 people so far this year, apace with 6,300 drug murders in 2008. Some 45,000 troops and federal police have been deployed across the country.

In the northwestern state of Durango, where a burst of cartel killings have shaken up formerly quiet towns, the body was found on Tuesday of a Mexican crime reporter believed murdered by drug hitmen.

Durango is part of the home territory of top drug fugitive Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, who is fighting a Michoacan cartel known as "La Familia" (The Family) for control of the area.

Small towns in marijuana-growing Michoacan are under siege from rival cartels who want control of rural outposts along smuggling corridors, stretching the army in sparsely inhabited mountains that hide drug plantations and laboratories.

Local officials and police are often bribed or terrorized into helping the well-armed gangs that move billions of dollars of narcotics into the United States every year.