Party massacre in Mexico as 17 gunned down

TO cries of “Kill them all!” gunmen opened fire at a weekend birthday party in Torreon, mowing down at least 17 people in another attack that laid bare the brutality of Mexico’s long-running drug war.

A dozen people were also wounded as the killers sprayed more than 200 bullets indiscriminately at the private celebration outside Torreon, an industrial city in the northern state of Coahuila.

Sunday’s attack brought the number of victims across the country, which has been blighted by drug-related violence since President Felipe Calderon launched a 2006 crackdown on the cartels, to at least 57 just in the past weekend.