Seventeen Party-Goers Shot Dead
From BBC News Online:
"A pre-dawn gun attack on a birthday party in the northern Mexican city of Torreon has left 17 people dead and 10 injured, police say.
* Battling the cartels
* Beltran Leyva gang
* 'Family values' of Mexico drug gang
* On patrol in Mexico's most dangerous city
Gunmen sprayed bullets at revellers after storming the party inside a walled garden in the city in Coahuila state, across the border from Texas.
Drug gangs are fighting over the region, which is a key transit point along smuggling routes into the US.
An unconfirmed report said the attack had been carried out by "drug hitmen".
A spokesperson for Mexico's attorney general's office told the BBC that the attack was believed to have been carried out by an organised crime gang.
'Kill them all'
The attackers drove up to the party, taking place in the open but within the grounds of a recreation centre, before opening fire on those present with
a machine gun, reports said.
The victims, aged between 20 and 38, included five women and the man who was celebrating his birthday.
"They came in, opened fire and shot against everything that moved," an official at the Coahuila prosecutor's office told Reuters news agency, on
condition of anonymity.
The same source said the attackers had pulled up at the venue of the birthday party in five SUVs, smashing down a door to reach the walled garden
where the party was being held.
A source within the state police department told AFP news agency that witnesses had reported hearing the group yell "kill them all" before opening
fire.
The attack took place at around 0130 (0630 GMT) on Sunday in a recreation centre popular for weekend parties, the agency says.
From BBC News
"More than 200 bullet casings fired from automatic weapons were found at the scene, officials said.
Coahuila is thought to be a stronghold of the powerful Zetas cartel, reports the BBC's Julian Miglierini, in Mexico City.
But their control over this territory is now said to be facing a challenge from their former allies, the Gulf Cartel, in an alliance with the Sinaloa
cartel led by Joaquin Guzman, Mexico's most wanted man."
This turf war has increased violence in Coahuila, of which this latest attack is one of the most gruesome examples."
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