CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — At least 20 people were killed in drug-gang violence over the weekend in this northern Mexican border city, including seven found dead outside one house.
The seven men were believed to have been at a party when they were gunned down Saturday night, said Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office in Chihuahua state. Five were found dead in a car, and the other two were shot at the entrance of the home.
There have been several such massacres in Ciudad Juarez, a city held hostage by a nearly three-year turf battle between the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels.
Few residents now venture out to bars and restaurants. And others have discovered that they aren’t even safe in their own homes. Last month, gunmen stormed two neighboring houses and massacred more than a dozen young people attending a party for a 15-year-old.
Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, has become one of the world’s deadliest cities. More than 6,500 people have been killed here since the start of 2008.
The violence doesn’t stop there. In the southern city of Oaxaca, police found a human head in a gift-wrapped box left Saturday on the side of a cliff popular for its picturesque view. Reporters at the scene saw a threatening note left with the head signed, “the last letter Z,” an apparent reference to the Zetas drug gang.
