13 killed in shootings in Mexico

Mexico City, April 15 (IANS/EFE) Thirteen people died in unrelated shootings in northern and southern Mexico over the weekend, officials said Monday.

Six people, including two children, were killed when gunmen attacked a house where a children's party was being held in the southern state of Oaxaca, officials said.

"The cause of this regrettable incident is still not known," a Oaxaca attorney general's office spokesperson said.

The shooting occurred Saturday night in Oaxaca's Mixteca region and those responsible have not been identified, "but the authorities are working on the investigation".

"It was around 9:00 p.m. when three armed subjects arrived in an automobile" at the house in the city of Huajuapan de Leon, the AG's office spokesman said, citing statements given by neighbours to investigators. The gunmen entered the house and opened fire on the people attending the party.

Two people, identified as Porfirio Lopez Cruz and Salvador Aguilar Torres, were killed instantly, while the other four victims were critically wounded by multiple gunshots.

The four wounded people, including children ages 18 months and 11, were transported to different hospitals, but in the end, regrettably, they all died, the spokesperson said.

Several bullet casings from large-caliber weapons were found at the crime scene.

Officials in the northern state of Durango, meanwhile, said Monday that at least seven people were killed in a shooting caused by a dispute between families in a community outside the city of Pueblo Nuevo.

The shooting occurred last Friday, the Durango attorney general's office said in a statement.

The bad blood between the families dates to last November, when Bernardo Chamorro murdered Cesar Flores in the village of Balonita.

Damiano Castro Flores, a relative of Cesar Flores, went to Chamorro's house in the village last Friday to settle scores and was mortally wounded.

"A few hours later, relatives of both Cesar and Damiano went looking for revenge at the referenced family's house, attacking the six members and later fleeing, with the results already described."

Pueblo Nuevo is in the Durango-Sinaloa border region, a mountainous area where illegal drugs are grown and drug traffickers operate.

--IANS/EFE

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