11 killed at Mexico rehab center
(CNN) — 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 previously 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.
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. Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz said at the time that authorities believed a rival drug gang shot the men.
The motive for Sunday’s shooting was not immediately clear.
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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Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/04/world/americas/mexico-attack/index.html?eref=edition
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