Reuters/Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
Gunmen with automatic weapons burst into a Mexican strip club on the US border, opened fire on patrons and killed six people including an American soldier, the army said on Wednesday.
The hooded gunmen stormed into the bar in Ciudad Juarez as strippers were dancing for customers, sought out the six men and shot them several times.
A 26-year-old off-duty US soldier who had crossed over from El Paso, Texas, was among the dead, army spokesman Enrique Torres said.
“It appears drugs were being sold at the place,” Torres said of the strip joint. “The hitmen went directly for their victims, no one else.”
The suspected drug hitmen escaped the bar easily, while panicking customers fled as pools of blood gathered around bullet cases on the bar floor.
In a separate assault near the wealthy northern city of Monterrey, around 30 suspected drug hitmen killed a municipal police chief just five days after he took up his post, and left a threatening warning for the local mayor, police said.
The heavily armed convoy killed Juan Arturo Esparza, a retired general picked over the weekend to head the police force in the municipality of Garcia.
Four other people traveling with Esparza, including two bodyguards, also died in Wednesday’s attack.
Moments beforehand, the hitmen left a written message at the house of Garcia’s mayor saying “be careful”. |
