GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – Guatemala’s top security  official will quit this month, forcing President Alvaro Colom  to fill the post for the fourth time since he took office in  2008 as he battles drug gang violence.

Interior Minister Salvador Gandara will step down on July  15 for personal reasons, the president’s office said yesterday.

“He intends to retake his post in local government,”  presidential spokesman Fernando Barillas said.

Gandara took the Interior Ministry job in January with a  promise to tackle brutal street gangs and drug cartels that  make Guatemala one of the most violent countries in Latin  America.

Despite shaking up the national police force, Gandara, who  was considered a hard-line reformer, had been unable to improve  security and crime is still rife, putting him under pressure. Gandara’s predecessor Francisco Jimenez was replaced after  serving just six months. Colom’s first interior minister was  killed in a helicopter crash in June 2008.

Rival Mexican drug cartels are fighting over Guatemala as a  route to ship cocaine into the United States from South  America.     Guatemala has one of the highest murder rates in Latin  America with an average of 17 people killed a day in a  population of 13 million.