Daily Times

Eight people were killed by an armed gang at a party in Mexico’s northern Zacatecas state, local authorities said on Sunday.

The attack took place in the Panuco municipality that has been the scene of recent clashes between rival criminal gangs, authorities said. It was “an attack against people that were at a party … Unfortunately, eight people lost their lives: two women and six men, all adults,” said the Zacatecas security secretariat in a statement. At least six other people were wounded in the attack, according to local press reports.

Prosecutors in Zacatecas are investigating the attack. Cells from the notorious Sinaloa drug cartel operate in Zacatecas. There have been internal conflicts within the Sinaloa cartel and also with the rival Jalisco New Generation cartel for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes to the United States. Zacatecas has seen a raft of recent deadly attacks. On June 25, a clash between assumed criminal gangs in the secluded municipality of Valparaiso left 18 dead.

Two days earlier in the state capital, also called Zacatecas, the bodies of two missing police officers were found tied to a bridge. Also late last month, armed men burst into a house in the municipality of Fresnillo and murdered seven people. Drug-linked violence in Mexico has resulted in 300,000 murders since December 2006, according to official figures, when the federal government launched a controversial operation to combat organized crime.