16 Killed in Mexico State of Guanajuato During 2 Different Shootings
Gunmen attacked a Christmas season party early Sunday, killing a dozen people in the town of Salvatierra in Mexico’s north-central state of Guanajuato, prosecutors said.
State prosecutors also reported that four other people died in a shooting in the city of Salamanca, but did not describe the circumstances of that attack.
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Local media said the victims in Salvatierra were leaving an event hall following a Christmas party known as a “posada” when they were gunned down.
Following the reports of the killings, Mexico’s president called for the resignation of the state prosecutor in Guanajuato in light of the state’s high levels of violence.
Guanajuato has been the scene of bloody turf battles between the Jalisco cartel and local gangs backed by the Sinaloa cartel. The state has long had the highest number of homicides in Mexico.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, speaking at his daily news conference on Monday, tied the high levels of violence in Guanajuato to the increase in drug use seen in the state in central Mexico and said it required special attention.
“For that reason too, my respectful insistence in that they change the state prosecutor, who has been there 13 years and has colossal political power,” López Obrador said. “It’s as if he were the governor, supported by groups with a lot of influence.”
Between last Thursday and the killings Sunday, Guanajuato recorded 40 murders, according to data shown by López Obrador.
The president said that Guanajuato is also among the states with the highest levels of drug use in the country.
Meanwhile, in the Caribbean coast resort of Tulum, three men were shot to death and four people were wounded in an attack at a bar Sunday, authorities said.
Quintana Roo state prosecutors said a preliminary investigation indicated the shooting “may have been a dispute involving retail drug sales, and for that reason the safety of the public and that of our visitors, was never at risk.”
But shootouts between local drug gangs in Tulum have killed tourists who were caught in the crossfire in the past.
In 2021 in Tulum, two tourists – one a California travel blogger born in India and the other German – were killed while eating at a restaurant. They apparently were caught in the crossfire of a gunfight between rival drug dealers.
Early this year, the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert warning travelers to “exercise increased situational awareness” especially after dark, at Mexico’s Caribbean beach resorts like Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum.
Source: ABC7
