15 killed in Mexico car wash massacre
Gunmen killed 15 people at a car wash in a Pacific coast state where drug-gang violence has risen this year – the third massacre in Mexico in less than a week.
The gunmen, in three vehicles, drove up to the car wash in the city of Tepic and opened fire, said Fernando Carvajal, public safety secretary of Nayarit state. Fifteen men were killed and three people were injured.
The motive was not immediately clear but investigators suspect it was the work of organised crime, Mr Carvajal said.
He said most of the victims were recovering drug addicts working at the car wash. One victim, however, had just driven up to the business in a motorcycle and appeared not to have worked there, and another body was found at a nearby fruit stand.
Mr Carvajal said the owners of the business had another car wash in the city where a man was killed Tuesday, and police were investigating whether the attacks were linked.
Nayarit governor Ney Gonzalez said investigators believed some of the victims had been washing a stolen car.
“These boys were fighting for hope, were fighting against drugs,” he said. “The same as in Ciudad Juarez, the same thing in Tijuana,” he added, referring to recent attacks on rehab centres in those cities.
President Felipe Calderon, speaking at a forum on security, called for a minute of silence for the victims of the Tepic attack and two other massacres that have occurred since Friday: an attack on a birthday party that killed 14 young people in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, and a shooting at a drug rehab centre in Tijuana that killed 13 recovering addicts.
The three attacks did not appear to be related. Such mass shootings have become increasingly common in Mexico, where drug-gang violence has surged in recent years.
Cartel-style violence has picked up this year in Nayarit, a small Pacific coast state wedged along drug trafficking route disputed by several drug gangs.
In April, 12 bodies, eight of them partially burned, were found in the fields outside the Nayarit town of Xalisco. Mr Gonzalez ordered schools to close early in June because of rising violence.
