Eleven people, including eight women, were murdered in an attack on a hotel and two bars in central Mexico, authorities said on Tuesday.
The attack was launched Monday in a drug trafficking area in Celaya in the state of Guanajuato, authorities said.
The victims “presented wounds produced by impacts of firearms”, indicated the parquet floor in a press release.
The authorities initially spoke of the ten victims killed at the scene of the attack. A woman later died during her transfer to the hospital, according to the prosecution.
On the spot, the investigators found the message of a criminal group claiming responsibility for the attack, evoking a settling of accounts.
“This is a rivalry linked to delinquency,” said Sophia Huett, Guanajuato State Security Secretary. The group probably wanted to avenge the assassination of one of their own, adds the official.
According to witnesses, armed people entered the establishments and shot at those present, then poured gasoline on them in an attempt to set fire to the premises.
The bodies were left lying among the tables and chairs.
“It’s not strictly speaking a bar in a commercial or tourist area,” added the Secretary of Security. “He is in a neighborhood with a history of frequent arrests of people in connection with petty drug trafficking and homicides.”
The state of Guanajuato, a prosperous industrial center crossed by an important oil pipeline network and where a refinery is located, has become one of the most violent states in Mexico due to the conflict between the “Santa Rosa de Lima” cartels and “Jalisco New Generation”.
AFP
Gangs vie for control of drug trafficking and stolen fuel.
Mexico has been hit by a spiral of violence that has claimed some 340,000 lives — most attributed to organized crime — since 2006, when a controversial military counter-narcotics offensive was deployed.
On Monday, three people were killed in a shooting in an office in the center of the Mexico City capital, in neighborhoods relatively spared from the violence that strikes the rest of the capital and the country.
It is a “direct attack” (targeted) carried out by a suspect who fled, according to the prosecution.