Eight people were killed Thursday in a series of violent events in Ciudad Juárez, a major city in Mexico that borders the United States, authorities and witnesses said.
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Two people were killed in a prison riot in this town on the Rio Bravo, which marks the border with the United States, Chihuahuan prosecutors said.
Four people were injured in the mutiny, which local media has attributed, like the two subsequent attacks, to the Sinaloa cartel of former drug lord Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
Two women then died in the attack on a grocery store, in which one was also injured. The store and two other premises were set on fire.
Finally, in the evening, gunmen killed four local radio station employees who were doing publicity work in front of a pizzeria and were identified by a colleague who came to the scene, an AFP employee at the scene said.
“I deeply regret the loss of life in this atrocious event against Ciudad Juárez,” Chihuahua Gov. Maru Campos said on Twitter, noting that federal and state authorities deployed an operation in the city of 1.5 million people had to restore order.
Some neighborhoods in Ciudad Juárez were deserted on Thursday and universities suspended classes on Friday, while the business community called on the government to take tough action against organized crime.
These events came two days after an outbreak of violence in the states of Jalisco (west) and Guanajuato (center), which the government blamed on the Jalisco – New Generation (CJNG) cartel, one of the most powerful in the country.