- Title: MEXICO: Fifteen killed in massacre at car wash
- Date: 28th October 2010
- Summary: STREET NEAR CAR WASH WITH POLICE
- Embargoed: 12th November 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Mexico
- Country: Mexico
- Reuters ID: LVARMWWQI2R9HBNPNL7P72JR8QZ
- Story Text: A group of suspected drug hitmen men shot dead at least 15 people at a car wash in western Mexico on Wednesday (October 27), the third massacre in just a few days, putting new pressure on President Felipe Calderon.
The gunmen opened fire on the workers in the car wash on the outskirts of the coastal city of Tepic in Nayarit state, killing them instantly.
A spokeswoman for the Nayarit state attorney's office said the men had likely been killed by "members of organized crime".
Video footage showed the bodies of victims and pools of blood on the ground at the car wash.
The multiple murder is the third since Friday, when gunmen shot and killed 14 people, including a 14-year-old girl, at a party in Ciudad Juarez across from El Paso, Texas. On Sunday, gunmen in Tijuana killed 14 people at a rehabilitation center in the city.
It was not immediately clear why the hitmen attacked the car wash workers, the state prosecutor's office said.
Nayarit, a coastal state with expensive beach resorts catering to U.S. tourists, has remained a quiet corner of Mexico since Calderon launched his drug war in December 2006.
But the shootings underscores how killings have spread from the notoriously violent border region across the country.
The massacres have put renewed pressure on Calderon, who has vowed to beat back the cartels but is struggling to defend his strategy as the death toll from his drug war surges.
Almost 30,000 people have died in drug-related killings across Mexico over the past four years and more than 90 percent of the murders go unsolved, according to rights groups.
The recent rash of massacres suggest that local gangs linked to major drug cartels are fighting turf wars for control of criminal rackets, rather than over smuggling routes into the United States, drug trade specialists say.
Mexico's interior minister immediately condemned the killings. In a televised security meeting on Wednesday, Calderon pledged to continue his fight against drugs, and held a moment of silence for the victims of the Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana attacks. He sent condolences to victims of the families, including those killed in Nayarit.
"I want to initiate our session today, expressing once again my most sincere condolences to the relatives and friends and those who lost their lives in recent days and hours, whether it be in the El Camino rehabilitation centre in Tijuana or the innocent young people who lost their lives in Horizontes del Sur in Ciudad Juarez and those who died today in a similar event today in Nayarit," said Calderon.
Calderon also condemned the barbarity of the drug gangs. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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