TIJUANA, Mexico, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Three Mexican police were abducted, killed and dumped on a heavily patrolled road near the U.S. border on New Year's Day despite an influx of troops in the area, the state attorney general's office said on Thursday.

The policemen from the sprawling border city of Tijuana near San Diego, California -- one of them a senior city police officer -- were found wrapped in sheets outside the nearby beach town of Rosarito on a highway with several army checkpoints.

"This looks like a response by organized crime to the military's increased presence here," said an official from the Baja California state attorney general's office.

President Felipe Calderon has been using some 25,000 troops and federal police to battle powerful organized crime gangs and drug cartels since he came to power a year ago.

The government sent hundreds more troops to Tijuana and Rosarito in late December and disarmed Rosarito's police force after a failed attempt to kill the town's police chief raised suspicions it was infiltrated by drug gangs.

The police executions were the first drug-related murders in Baja California, Mexico's most violent state, this year.

In 2007, the state counted more than 400 drug-related killings as more than 2,500 people were killed nationwide in spite of the military assault on traffickers. (Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz; Writing by Robin Emmott, Editing by Sandra Maler)

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