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Jul 28, 2010
An attack July 18 on a gay-themed birthday party in the northern Mexican city of Torreon has left 18 people dead and more than a dozen injured, police say.
Gunmen sprayed bullets at revelers 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 United States.
The attackers drove up to the party, taking place in the open but within the grounds of a recreation center, before opening fire on those present with a machine-gun, reports said.
The victims, aged between 20 and 38, included the gay 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.
The same source said the attackers had pulled up at the venue of the birthday party in five 4x4s, 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.
More than 200 bullet casings fired from automatic weapons were found at the scene, officials said.
The Mexican government says more than 24,800 people have died in drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown on the cartels in December 2006.
from WiG and AP reports
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