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Mexico gunmen kill youths, take hostages in different cities of Sinaloa

by Pat Garcia | July 13, 2008 at 07:03 pm

2905 views | 22 Recommendations | 6 comments

Its so sad to report news of such violence in my country. Mazatlan is the place where I spent some of my early childhood, and came back to live in after spending some time in N.Y city. The crime in N.Y was very high during the late 70"s so Mazatlan was a haven of peace to me. I never experienced or was even near such violence in N.Y. This is war!

I met my husband here, so there are many beautiful memories of the place in my mind and heart. Two years ago when I visited family in December I was at the Gran Plaza and ate at the restaurant area where the shootout took place.

Panic overtakes Mazatlan, the violent events cause tension in different parts of the northern port

Se apodera el pánico de Mazatlán Los hechos violentos en el Centro Comercial provoca tensión en diversos puntos del puerto Noroeste / Redacción

Gunmen travelling in three vehicles opened fire with automatic weapons on four other cars, officials said. Seven people were killed outright, one died later in hospital and another five were injured.
Among the victims were a 12-year-old girl, two young men aged 17 and two 18-year-old women, Mexican media reported.
A local newspaper, El Debate, said that police found some 300 bullet casings at the scene of the shooting.
It is not clear whether the victims' cars were targeted or whether they were caught up in a shootout between rival drug gangs.

Gunmen killed eight youths and a police chief and took dozens of restaurant patrons hostage for hours in two attacks in the drug gang-ridden state of Sinaloa, officials said on Sunday.

A group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil in the early hours of Sunday, killing five young men and three female minors, a police source told Reuters.

In an earlier attack on Saturday, six other armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall to escape security forces after they shot dead local police chief Sixto Escobedo when he resisted their attempt to kidnap him.

The attackers, dressed in police uniforms, took some 40 people hostage in a restaurant inside the mall while they negotiated their escape with police.

Drug gang killings in Mexico have soared to unprecedented levels, with some 1,700 people dead so far this year, as an army-led crackdown intensifies turf wars between rival gangs, whose hitmen are increasingly taking their battles public with daylight shootouts in busy streets.

Eight youngsters were murdered in Guamuchil. The violent attack was registered four blocks away from the Police Station.... and they arrived 2 hours later!

The gunmen shot four different vehicles that were waiting at a the stop light on Rosales and Enrique Dunant, and then left in different directions.

Asesinan a ocho jóvenes en Guamúchil El ataque violento se registró a cuatro cuadras de la base de la PME... ¡y llegaron 2 horas después!

Los sicarios dispararon contra cuatro unidades motrices que hacían su alto en el semáforo ubicado por Rosales y Enrique Dunant, y luego se retiraron para diferentes lugares.