MEXICO CITY – Suspected drug hitmen stormed a private party and killed 17 people in the northern Mexican city of Torreon yesterday in one of the deadliest attacks in Mexico’s drug war, police said.
Gunmen in five SUVs drove up to the party in a walled patio and garden on the outskirts of the city in Coahuila state, across from Texas, smashed down the door and opened fire on partygoers at about 1am local time, Coahuila’s prosecutor’s office said.
“They came in, opened fire and shot against everything that moved,” said an official at the office, who declined to be identified.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement 18 people were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals. The party garden was strewn with more than 100 bullet casings. The assailants escaped after the attack and no arrests had been made, the statement said.
The early morning attack came days after a drug gang detonated a car bomb in Ciudad Juarez late on Thursday, killing four people in the first attack of its kind in Mexico’s drug war.
Ciudad Juarez’s main daily El Diario reported yesterday that US agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were in the city to investigate the car bomb attack. US and Mexican officials declined to comment. – (Reuters)