CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Gunmen barged into a bar in the battered border city of Ciudad Juarez and opened fire late on Thursday, killing seven women and one man, authorities have said.
Three others were wounded at the Las Torres bar and were in critical condition, said Arturo Sandoval, spokesman for Chihuahua state prosecutors. Mr Sandoval said investigators were still trying to determine who was behind the attack.
Ciudad Juarez is the centre of a fierce turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels, and has become one of the world’s most dangerous cities.
More than 3,000 people were killed last year in the city of 1.3 million residents, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Meanwhile, a shoot-out between troops and armed men killed nine people in a central Mexican state that has suffered a rise in drug violence, the government said.
The gun battle erupted after soldiers came under fire while investigating a tip-off about the presence of armed men in Tabasco, a town in the southern part of Zacatecas state, the defence department said.
One soldier and eight gunmen were killed in the fighting on Wednesday night, the department added. Two other soldiers were wounded and authorities seized six assault rifles, three radios and two bullet-proof jackets.
No details were given about the gunmen’s identities, but Zacatecas lies between territory controlled by the Sinaloa cartel and an area disputed by the Gulf and Zetas gangs, and has recently had a surge in violence.
In Baja, California, 10 soldiers were detained for alleged ties to drug traffickers and turned over to federal prosecutors in Mexico City on Wednesday, the defence department said. It added that the soldiers were assigned to the 67th Battalion in the Pacific coast city of San Quintin.
The department said the soldiers comprised three junior officers and seven enlisted men.
Drug traffickers have been recruiting members of the armed forces for years.
In one of the most shocking cases, Gen Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested in 1997 when he was Mexico’s drug czar and charged with protecting then cocaine kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the late leader of the Juarez cartel.
Also, the Zetas drug gang was started in the late 1990s by a small group of elite soldiers based in Tamaulipas who deserted to work for the Gulf drug cartel.
Mexican president Felipe Calderón has deployed more than 40,000 troops throughout Mexico since he launched a crackdown against drug traffickers shortly after taking office in December 2006.
Drug gang violence in Mexico has accounted for nearly 35,000 people killed since then.
In the northern border state of Chihuahua, assailants killed a man who became a local hero after killing three gunmen who had gone to his home to demand extortion money, officials said.
Alvaro Sandoval Diaz (50) and his wife Griselda Pedroza Rocha (35) were killed on Tuesday night in Puerto Palomas, across the border from Columbus, New Mexico, Mr Sandoval said.
Last month, Mr Sandoval said, Mr Diaz opened fire on four armed men who arrived to extort money from him, killing three.
The assailants were members of La Linea, enforcers for the Juarez Cartel, prosecutors said.
Relatives of the couple told the Ciudad Juarez newspaper El Diariothat the couple's six-year-old daughter witnessed the killings and that the entire family now planned to leave the town.
“The girl just curled up as she watched how they killed her father and then her mother,” the child’s grandmother told the newspaper. – (AP)