Eight die in attack on party in Mexico

Gunmen burst into a party in western Mexico and killed eight youths and left another person wounded.

The attack yesterday was the second in two days. On Thursday, gunmen in the border city of Ciudad Juarez shot dead six young men and a woman at a wake, and seriously wounded a 10-year-old girl.

The massacre happened in the Pacific coast township of Navolato, near the Sinaloa state capital of Culiacan.

Local media reported that the attackers arrived in a convoy of vehicles and opened fire with assault rifles – tactics favoured by Mexico’s drug gangs.

But the state is home to some of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, and gunmen have taken to staging mass attacks on gatherings they believe might be attended by rival gang members.

The death toll in Thursday’s Ciudad Juarez shootings rose to six on Friday after a woman died of wounds suffered in the attack on the wake, which was being held at a private home for a young man shot to death in his car earlier in the week.

In January, gunmen killed 16 people, many of them teenagers, who had gathered for a party in Ciudad Juarez.