Gunmen burst into a Mexican drug rehab center and kill 4 men and wound 2 others

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Assailants shot to death four men and wounded two others in an attack at a Mexican drug rehabilitation center, officials said Wednesday.

Officials in the north-central state of Guanajuato said the killings occurred late Tuesday in the city of Salamanca. There was no immediate information on the conditions of those wounded in the attack.

Mexico’s privately run drug rehabilitation centers are often abusive, clandestine, unregulated and underfunded. They have been the targets of similar attacks in the past.

The industrial and agricultural state of Guanajuato has for years been the scene of a bloody turf battle between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and a local gang, the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato has the highest number of homicides of any state in Mexico.

Mexican drug gangs have killed suspected street-level dealers from rival gangs sheltering at such facilities in the past.

In 2020, gunmen shot to death 27 people at rehab center in another city in Guanajuato, Irapuato. In 2010, 19 people were killed in an attack on a rehab center in Chihuahua, a city in northern Mexico. More than a dozen other attacks on such facilities occurred in the decade between those massacres.

The Mexican government spends relatively little money on rehabilitation, often making the unregistered centers the only option available for poor families.

In addition, addicts and dealers who face attacks from rivals on the streets sometimes take refuge at the rehab clinics, making the clinics themselves targets for attack.