CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Gunmen stormed two neighboring homes and massacred 13 people at a party, even as a new government strategy seeks to restore order with social programs and massive police deployments.
Attackers in two vehicles pulled up to the houses in a lower-middle-class neighborhood late Friday and opened fire on about four dozen partygoers gathered for a 15-year-old boy’s birthday party.
The dead identified so far were 13 to 32 years old, including six women and girls, Chihuahua state Attorney General Carlos Salas told reporters. The majority of the victims were high school students, a survivor said.
Relatives of the victims gathered outside the prosecutors’ office, some weeping laments, some demanding justice.
“Why, my God, why,” shouted the mother of Daniel Figueroa, 16, after she identified her son’s body.
“I want to be dead, with my daughter,” the mother of a 19-year-old woman told a reporter. “This cannot go on. We want justice, even though nothing can bring her back.”
Salas said 20 people were wounded, including a 9-year- old boy.
Residents of Ciudad Juárez no longer go out much to celebrate because of a violent turf war between the Sinaloa and Juarez cartels, who frequently attack their rivals in public places.
One survivor of Friday’s massacre said the birthday boy’s mother had decided to hold the party at their home because she thought it was safer. The party spilled over into the neighboring home.
The 16-year-old boy, who did not want to be identified, said an attacker entered one of the homes and asked partygoers about a car parked in front of the home, suggesting the killers may have been following the vehicle. He survived the attack by throwing himself to the floor and other partygoers fell on top of him, shielding him from the bullets.
Police found 70 bullet casings from assault weapons typically used by drug gangs, whose bloody turf battles have killed more than 2,000 people this year in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.
Salas said the attackers escaped, and police had no immediate information on any suspects or possible motive. Salas expressed outrage at the situation.
“The criminals do not respect families or their homes,” Salas said. “How can they wound young women, how can they severely wound a 9-year-old boy, how is it possible that a group of youths gathering to hold a birthday party wind up like this?”
The Interior Department condemned the killings in a statement and pledged “to help the efforts of state and local authorities re-establish order in Ciudad Juárez.”
Some recent attacks on private homes have resulted in apparently innocent people being killed, either because a targeted person was at the gathering or because gunmen simply had the wrong address.
