MEXICO CITY: Five people were killed and nearly a dozen injured in separate shootings in Mexico City on Sunday, authorities said, adding to a growing death toll in the capital which has largely been spared the criminal violence plaguing the country.
Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot four people in a bar in the gritty Llano Redondo neighbourhood on the city’s southwestern fringe early on Sunday morning, according to the local attorney general’s office.
A woman of 23, and two men aged 23 and 38 died of their injuries. Authorities said the fourth victim, a 23-year-old man, remains in hospital after the attack.
The gunmen fled, said a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, adding that all the victims were Mexicans.
Then on Sunday afternoon, a 45-year-old woman and a man of 55 were fatally shot at a street market in the sprawling borough of Iztapalapa on the eastern edge of Mexico City, the attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Ten other people, including two minors, were injured by the gunfire, the statement said.
The motives for the shootings were not immediately clear and investigations are continuing, the spokesman said.
Last week, Mexican marines shot dead eight suspected gang members during an exchange of fire in broad daylight in the south of the city, one of the most explosive outbreaks of violence to occur in the capital in recent years.
Murders have risen sharply in Mexico over the past 18 months, creating a major headache for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who pledged to end gang violence when he took office in December 2012. A new president will be elected next year.
This year the country is on track to register its highest murder toll since modern records began in 1997.
Official data show the May-June period was the most violent two-month stretch on record in Mexico City, which has not been as badly affected as much of the country by warring drug gangs.
