At least 11 people were killed and another dozen injured when gunmen opened fire on locals who had gathered at a football pitch in the city of Salamanca in central Mexico on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said armed men arrived at the grounds in several vehicles and shot at those gathered there seemingly indiscriminately.<\/p>\n
Many families had stayed behind to socialise after a match between local clubs. At least one woman and one child were among those killed.<\/p>\n
The motive behind the shooting is not yet clear. Guanajuato, the state in which Salamanca is located, registered the highest number of murders in the whole of Mexico last year.<\/p>\n
Neighbours reported hearing at least 100 shots ring out as the gunmen opened fire at the Caba\u00f1as pitch in the Loma de Flores neighbourhood.<\/p>\n
Local and federal security forces are now investigating the deadly shooting.<\/p>\n
It came just a day after several violent incidents in the city, in which a total of five men were killed and another was abducted. <\/p>\n
Guanajuato has seen a spike in violence committed by a number of gangs that engage in the theft of oil and fuel, as well as other criminal activities such as drug trafficking and extortion. <\/p>\n
Gang members frequently hold up tanker trucks carrying oil and tap oil pipelines belonging to state-run oil company Pemex.<\/p>\n
Salamanca, which is home to a major Pemex refinery, has been particularly subject to violent gang-related attacks.<\/p>\n
Analysts say that the rivalry between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Cartel de Santa Rosa de Lima (CSRL) is behind many of the most brutal incidents.<\/p>\n
Their criminal activities are not confined to Mexico, with both the smuggling of stolen fuel and illicit drugs spreading violence into the United States.<\/p>\n
Last year, the US State Department designated the CJNG as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation and, more recently, placed sanctions on the CSRL.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has made the fight against criminal gangs sending illicit drugs such as heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamines and cocaine one of his priorities. <\/p>\n
He has in the past alleged that “cartels are running Mexico” and has threatened to hit “narco-terrorists” with land strikes.<\/p>\n
The US has already carried out at least 36 strikes against vessels allegedly transporting drugs by sea, both in the Caribbean and the Pacific, killing at least 125 people.<\/p>\n
Legal experts and Trump’s critics have questioned the legality of these strikes. <\/p>\n
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum last week handed over 37 “high-impact” suspects to the US in what local media described as an attempt by her government to co-operate with US counternarcotic efforts and thereby ward off the possibility of Trump ordering unilateral strikes against the cartels in Mexican territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least 11 people were killed and another dozen injured when gunmen opened fire on locals who had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-434433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}