Armed men storm Mexican Caribbean beach, killing 2
Mexico City, Nov 4 (EFE).- Armed men stormed a beach in a resort area south of Cancún on Thursday and opened fire, leaving two alleged drug dealers dead and beach goers scrambling for shelter, Quintana Roo state authorities reported.
“The presence of armed individuals in the beach area of ??the Hotel Ziva in Puerto Morelos was reported to 911, [they] took the lives of two men who are presumed to be drug dealers. There are no tourists seriously injured or kidnapped,” the Secretariat of Public Security of Quintana Roo wrote on Twitter.
The state prosecutor’s office reported that the event was a “confrontation” between rival gangs of drug dealers and “two of them lost their lives at the scene.”
In addition, there were reports a tourist was receiving medical attention for a minor injury.
According to images shared on social media, the event triggered panic in several hotels in this exclusive area of Puerto Morelos, where many people took refuge inside the establishments.
The Mexican Caribbean, one of the tourist draw cards of the country, has been experiencing a wave of violence due to the clashing of armed groups.
On Oct. 21, a shooting at a restaurant in the resort area of Tulum left two foreign tourists dead and three others injured.
In mid-September there was another shooting in a Tulum establishment, leaving two people dead, according to local media.
Mexico has recorded the two most violent years in its history during the first 24 months of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s term, with 34,689 murder victims in 2019 and 34,558 in 2020.
The country has accumulated 25,392 malicious homicides between January and September 2021, a year-on-year reduction of 3.4 percent, compared to the same period of the previous year.
In the first nine months of the year, Quintana Roo recorded 495 murders. EFE
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