Gunmen kill 7, including child in Mexican resort

Mexican authorities said armed men on Saturday killed a child and six others in a resort in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.

The Guanajuato region has been increasingly plagued by drug cartel violence.

A local news site Debate Noticias, released a footage taken by an eye-witness at the scene, showing the victims after the attack in a palm-studded resort in the small town of Cortazar, about 65 km (40 miles) south of the city.

It was not clear who was behind the shooting that killed the seven-year-old, three men and three women, Cortazar’s local security department said. One person was seriously injured in the La Palma resort.

But in recent years rival drug cartels have been waging brutal battles to control territory and trafficking routes through the state.

Reuters reports that Mexico’s main television network, TV Azteca had a video from the scene showing panic-stricken adults and children walking past piles of dead bodies near a swimming pool.

“Heavily armed sicarios arrived and this is what happened,” said an unidentified man, using a word for hired assassins as he filmed at the resort in a video shared on the internet.

“After the attack, the attackers fled, but not before causing damage to the resort store and taking the security cameras and the monitor,” Cortazar’s security department said in a statement.

Mexico has registered more than 350,000 murders since the government controversially deployed the army to fight drug cartels in 2006, most of them blamed on criminal gangs.

 

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