Authorities were investigating Monday after at least 11 people were
killed when gunmen attacked a drug rehabilitation center in northern
Mexico, state media reported.
The attack occurred
around 10 p.m. Sunday in the northern city of Torreon, the state-run
Notimex news agency said, citing prosecutors. At least 15 people were
injured.
Photos of the scene
showed Red Cross ambulances outside the Your Life on the Rock
rehabilitation center. Inside, a man was slumped on a sofa, a pool of
blood beside him.
Drug treatment centers
have been targets of attacks in northern Mexico, a region where violence
has increased as warring cartels battle over territory and power and
government troops patrol the streets.
Last year, prosecutors said 13 people were killed after gunmen opened fire in another rehabilitation center in Torreon.
In 2010, at least 30
armed men invaded a drug treatment center in the northern city of
Chihuahua, killing 19 patients and wounding four.
At the time, witnesses
told authorities the armed men marched 23 people outside, lined them up
and shot them, the state-run Notimex news agency said, citing a local
police official.
In 2009, an attack on a
rehab facility in Ciudad Juarez left 17 dead and two wounded. Jose Reyes
Ferriz, then the city's mayor, said at the time that authorities
believed a rival drug gang shot the men.
The motive for Sunday's shooting was not immediately clear.
Several factors have
made rehab centers targets, said Edgardo Buscaglia, an expert on
organized crime and president of the Mexico-based nonprofit Instituto de
Accion Ciudadana (Citizen Action Institute).
"The people who go there
are usually involved in buying or selling drugs," he said. "We're
talking about urban gangs or youth gangs that are in charge of
delivering these drugs to the final consumers in the urban markets."
Some of them may have
talked with police, drawing ire from former associates, he said. Others
may be targets for rival gangs seeking revenge.
"They kill them because
these kids are either witnesses for the authorities or ... some of those
kids may be working in the selling of drugs. Adversary groups kill them
in the same ways they kill politicians working for the adversary
groups," he said. "Once you work for different organized crime groups,
it's very hard to get away from it."
In 2010, Mexico's
then-health secretary said rehab centers in the northern state of
Chihuahua had been forced to close because of pressure from gangs trying
to sell drugs there.
Last month, Mexico's
interior minister said the Zetas drug cartel and members of the allied
Gulf and Sinaloa cartels were in a fierce feud in the region. He blamed
the battle between rival cartels for the 49 decapitated and dismembered
bodies left along a highway in the northern city of Cadereyta, Nuevo
Leon.
More than 47,500 people
have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since President
Felipe Calderon began a crackdown on cartels in December 2006, according
to government statistics.
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