12 die in Honduras street shootings
Suspected members of a street gang opened fire on passengers in separate attacks on three buses in the coastal city of San Pedro Sula, killing 12 and wounding 18, police said today.
Three suspects were detained and were being questioned in connection with the shootings, which officials said were an apparent reaction to tough anti-gang laws passed earlier this month.
“This mass attack by the gangs is a reaction to the measures we have taken against them,” said Armando Calidonio, assistant minister of security.
Police said the attackers were believed to be members of the Mara Salvatrucha, one of Central America’s largest street gangs.
Four of the 18 wounded were listed in serious condition at local hospitals. The dead included nine men and three women.
The attacks began when three assailants boarded a bus in a northern suburb of San Pedro Sula on Saturday, 110 miles north of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and began to rob the passengers at gunpoint,
“The assailants killed each passenger with a shot to the head, after forcing them to turn over their valuables,” said Jose Luis Munoz, assistant chief of police in San Pedro Sula.
The bodies of the eight victims, their wallets and money lay scattered on the floor of the bus after the attack, Munoz said, suggesting that “robbery was not the main motive of the attackers”.
The only survivors of that attack were two boys, aged seven and two, whose father hid them under a seat. The father was killed.
Moments later, the same group of attackers, together with about four accomplices, opened fire on a passing bus in the southern part of the city after the driver refused to stop. The shots hit the bus’s windows, killing one passenger and woundimgd several others.
The attackers fled in a car, and quickly attacked another bus, apparently because the driver had refused to let them pass him.
They opened fire on that bus, killing three passengers and wounding three more.
The new law which went into effect on August. 15 punishes gang leaders with nine to 12 years of prison and fines.
Rank-and-file gang members can receive up to nine years in prison.
Honduras, with a population of 6.6 million, has an estimated 500 street gangs with almost 100,000 members. The two largest are the Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18.
