Gunmen kill 5 at drug rehab center in Mexico, escape by using metal spikes to puncture tires of security forces

Armed assailants attacked a drug rehabilitation center in Mexico, killing four people and wounding five others, local authorities said Wednesday.

The attack took place in Salamanca in the central state of Guanajuato on Tuesday night, the municipal government said in a statement.

Police and the National Guard “initiated a chase to find those responsible,” but the attackers escaped by throwing down metal spikes to puncture the tires of security forces in pursuit, it said.

Police said three bodies of those killed were found inside the rehab center while a fourth was found in the street.

No suspects have been arrested yet.

Disputes between drug gangs have led to rehab centers being targeted in several attacks in Mexico.

Authorities say some rehab centers are used as safe havens by suspected members of criminal groups, who are attacked by their rivals when found.

In July 2022, six people were shot dead at a drug rehab center near the western Mexican city of Guadalajara. Two years before that, heavily armed men stormed a drug rehab center in the central city of Irapuato and killed 27 people.

Guanajuato is Mexico’s most violent state, according to official homicide statistics, due to fighting between the local Santa Rosa de Lima cartel and the powerful Jalisco New Generation. Last month, the U.S. sanctioned a man known as “The Tank” for allegedly leading the Jalisco cartel’s fuel theft arm, supplying it with tens of millions of dollars a year by selling stolen gasoline through a network of seemingly legitimate businesses.

Mexico has recorded more than 450,000 murders since December 2006, when a controversial military anti-drug operation was launched.

The violence continued after Claudia Sheinbaum took office Tuesday as Mexico’s first female president in the nation’s more than 200 years of independence.